HANDBOUND
AT THE
LNIM.RSITY OF
TORONTO PRESS
THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF INDIA
f/^-y
IN SIX VOLUMES
VOLUME VI
The Indian Empire
1858-1918
LONDON
Cambridge University Press
FETTEB LANE
NEW YOBK • TORONTO
BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS
Macmillan
TOKYO
Maruzen Company Ltd
All rights reserved
^ THE
/ CAMBEIDGE
HISTOKY OF INDIA
VOLUME VI
The Indian Empire
18587-1918
With chapters on the development
of Administration 1818-1858
EDITED BY
H. H. DODWELL, M.A.
PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY AND CULTURE OF THE BRITISH
DOMINIONS IN ASIA. IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
b(
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1932
42,(0
v.fe
This volume can ako be obtained
as Volume V of
The Cambridge History of the British Empire
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
INTRODUCTION
XHE previous volume narrated the expansion of British power down
to the conquest of the Panjab and the Second Burmese War, and the
development of the administrative system down to 1 8 1 8 under the
guidance of Cornwallis in Bengal and of Munro in Madras. It thus
displayed the expansion of British India almost to its modern limits,
but dealt only with the earliest British attempts to build up a workable
method of government. The present volume, in the first place, carries
this latter development from 1818 down to the outbreak of the Indian
Mutiny. This period, in which the supremacy of the East India
Company was virtually uncontested, displayed great activity and
produced notable reforms. The belief that the Company's govern-
ment was obscurantist or reactionary lacks foundation. Without
exception the governors-general took high views of their obHgations,
while many of the Company's servants regarded themselves as pre-
eminently the servants of India. Under them the administrative
system took its final shape, with many local variations necessitated
by variations in the land tenures of the British provinces; and this new
system, in strong contrast with the system originally introduced by
Cornwallis, was based upon the plan of securing the fullest and most
detailed knowledge of social and economic conditions. In almost
every province district administration embraced large elements of
personal government; and many collectors of the period were till
recent times remembered with reverence in the districts which they
had ruled. As has been well said, had the Company's government
perished in the Mutiny, the later period of its rule would have been
long remembered as a golden age. But the development of good
district government was by no means the sole achievement of that
generation. Sati and thagi were suppressed, and female infanticide
greatly lessened, while the introduction of the railway and the tele-
graph, the extension of irrigation, the conservation of forests, the
spread of missionary activity and the growth of western education
brought India into contact of a new and fruitful kind with the external
world.
India's first answer to these beneficent changes was the Mutiny.
In ultimate analysis that movement was a Brahman reaction against
vi INTRODUCTION
influences which, given free play, would revolutionise the mental,
moral, and social condition of the country. It acted through the sepoy
army because that was the only organised body through which
Brahman sentiment could express itself; it acted through the Bengal
section of the sepoy troops because that alone included numerous
Brahmans and because its discipline was far more relaxed than that
of either the Madras or the Bombay sepoys. But this weapon was
broken by the very use to which it was put. The sepoys lost coherence
with the loss of their English officers. With the exception of Tantia
Topi no Indian leader of note emerged. Except in Oudh the sepoys
found no popular support. India indeed still had no common con-
sciousness. It was disunited, cloven into numberless mutually indif-
ferent or even hostile sections by caste, creed and distance, just as it
had always been. Therefore the force of the Mutiny was broken
before help arrived from England; and when help at last came, the
Mutiny was quickly crushed. If on the one hand it bequeathed to
the survivors heart-breaking memories of slaughtered women, of
broken trust, of wholesale executions, on the othertiie fact of its.^1^)-
pression exposed India to the more intense aBplicajtion-^f-tbose
westemisijog^ forces which had provoked its ^ccurreiice._ The
Company vanished, but the queen's government took its place_and
^'^pj^y^^^^^g^ ^^ control exercised from London. Foreign
policy, almost completely limited to the protection of India from the
Russian menace, was more closely than ever knit up with European
poUtics. And the centre of interest tended to shift from external
policy_Jij_^ntemar~Hevelopinent. India reached a "higher degree
union thaiiinia3~5ver before" known. Under the pressure of
poUtical fact the Indian states ceased to be the dependent but
external allies of 1858 and became integrsd parts of a new empire
of India. At the same time a new social phenomenon emerged. The
spread of western education in the cities of India and the growing
demand for administrative and professional services created a new
class of society — educated in western knowledge and possessed of
professional qualifications. This new class was essentially urban and
almost exclusively Brahman. In English it possessed a common
vehicle of thought. Railways and telegraphs brought the cities of
India into new and intimate relations. The rise of an Indian press
gave voice to common interests and aspirations. Hcjiee^merged^
new sense of unity, limited to a single class and not as yet touching
INTRODUCTION vii
rural India, but diffused throughout every city of the land. The
British government had in fact created the conditions under which
nationalist sentiment could arise. The purposes contemplated from
afar by Company's servants like Thomas Munro were being realised
by the servants of the crown.
This poHtical was accompanied by a great economic development.
Indian finance was handled by a succession of remarkably able men
with prudence and foresight. Debt was incurred mainly for productive
works which increased the wealth of the country in a degree incom-
parably greater than their cost. Irrigation, railways, agricultural
improvements, co-operative credit, all helped to create an India in
which wealth was more widely diffused than it had been for many
centuries, and permitted the development of a famine policy which
gradually ended that great scourge of humanity.
Such were two of the three main developments which mark out
the two generations which followed the Indian Mutiny. The third
consisted of a series of efibrts, still actively continuing, to transform
into an organic state the inorganic des^otimi_ which the crown had
mheiiteSTlrom the Company, and the Company^jfrom the former
Indian governments^ It was the greatest political experiment ever
attempted. It had no precedent. The peoples of Asia had created
great civilisations, and formed themselves into strong, well-knit and
durable social groups, but their political organisation had seldom
risen above the primitive community of the village. In this respect
the history of the Aryan invaders of India is most instructive. They
seem to have carried with them the same political gifts as their
brethren displayed in classical Greece and Rome. They belonged
to the stock which created the science and the art of politics. At the
dawn of history they dimly appear in India organised in modes which
might well have developed into an active political life. But their
tribal institutions and self-governing townships withered and decayed
under the Indian sun. The kings and emperors who arose after them
were ever limited in their action by social and religious influences
but never shared their power with political institutions. Therefore
when the rising middle class of Indians began to demand political
reform, and when the British government began to consider how best
to give effect to this demand, neither side could turn for guidance to
oriental political experience and were compelled to base their plans
on the aHen ideas of the west. Hence the purely BritishJorgL-takeir
viii INTRODUCTION
alike by the li^n^^rid^ of ^^^'^ TnrH^n^National Congress and the
pro^jsions^ thcvarious statutes designed to change the nature of
goUticaLpOii^erjnjiidiaL^.
Such is the subject-matter of the following pages. It presses closely
on the events of to-day.
Incedis p>er ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso.
Perhaps the more accurate and sober the statement, the less likely it
is to win general approval. But the present work may at least claim
to gather together in a single volume not only a wealth of personal
knowledge and experience but also the information scattered through
a multitude of blue-books, of statutes, of acts of the Indian legis-
latures; to present the views of poUcy uttered both by governors-
general and secretaries of state and by Indian poUtical leaders; above
all at the present moment it aspires to show clearly and firmly the
historical background, without some knowledge of which poUtical
decisions become matters of mere sentiment and chance.
H. H. D.
September 1932
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ADMINISTRATIVE DEVELOPMENT, 1818-1858
CHAPTER I
IMPERIAL LEGISLATION AND THE SUPERIOR
GOVERNMENTS, 1818-1857
By H. H. DoDWELL, MA., Professor of the history and culture of the
British dominions in Asia in the University of London.
PAGE
The Whig tradition i
TheActofi8i3 i
The reforms of 1833 3
Legal anomaHes 5
Legislative powers 5
The law member 7
The law comimissions 7
The government of Bengal 8
Recruitment of the covenanted service 9
The position of Indians 10
Slavery 11
Relations of the Company and the board 12
Recall of the governor-general 13
Decay of the Company's position 15
The Act of 1853 16
Competitive examinations i6
Reform of the legislature . . 17
The effects of competitive examinations 19
CHAPTER II
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL, 1818-1858
By Sir H. Verney Lovett, K.G.S.L, late Reader in Indian History
in the University of Oxford.
Limits of the presidency 20
Neglect of the local problems of Bengal 21
Appointment of a lieutenant-governor 22
Regulation system 22
District organisation 24
Police organisation 26
The magistrate-and-coUector 28
Effects of the Permanent Settlement 30
Communications 31
Thagi 33
Dacoity 34
Primitive tribes 35
Mutiny in Bengal 35
c H I VI b
X CONTENTS
CHAPTER III
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS, 1818-1857
By A. BuTTERWORTH, G.S.I., formerly Chief Secretary to
the Government of Madras.
PAGE
Annexation of Kumool 38
Troubles in Canara 38
Mopla rebellions 38
Rebellions in the Gircars 39
Human sacrifice 40
Slavery 40
Government of the presidency 41
District organisation 42
Courts of law 42
Land-revenue system 44
Revenue survey 49
Malabar tenures 49
Inam tenures 50
Irrigation . 51
District police 52
Mohatarfa 52
Salt revenue 53
Abkari 54
Reorganisation of the police 55
Jails 56
Civil surgeons 57
CHAPTER IV
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY, 1818-1857
By the late S. M. Edwardes, C.S.L, C.V.O.
Growth of the presidency 58
Early organisation 60
The mamlatdar 61
Taxation 62
Administration of justice 63
Reforms of 1830 67
Bombay legislation 67
Education 68
Police system 69
Administration of Sind 71
Jails 73
Public works and other departments 74
CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER V
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED
PROVINCES, CENTRAL PROVINCES, AND
THE PANJAB, 1818-1857
By Sir Patrick Fag an, K.G.I.E.
PAGE
Formation of the United Provinces, etc 75
The regulation system 76
Its application 77
Early police system 78
Criminal law 79
The land-revenue settlement . 80
The village community 82
Tenant-right . 83
Irrigation 84
Famines 84
Abkari 86
Municipalities 86
The non-regulation system 87
Panjab administration under Ranjit Singh 88
The Board of Administration 90
Early British administration in the Panjab 91
Public works 92
John Lawrence's administration 93
CHAPTER VI
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
By Sir H. Verney Lovett, K.C.S.I.
Warren Hastings's policy . . 95
Charles Grant's Observations 97
The Serampur Mission . . . . . . . . . . 98
David Hare 99
Indigenous schools in Bengal 100
The discussions of 1813 102
Foundation of the Vidyalaya 104
Ram Mohan Roy's petition . . . . 105
The Committee of Public Instruction , 106
The orientalist controversy 107
Elphinstone's efforts in Bombay 107
Munro's Madras plan 108
Alexander Duff's views 109
Macaulay's minute . .111
Orientalist opposition 112
Adam's reports 114
The Council of Education 115
Thomason's scheme in the North-Western Provinces 116
Slowness of progress 117
The dispatch of 1854 118
b-2
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER VII
SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
By Sir H. Verney Lovett, K.C.S.b
PAGE
The Company*s chaplains 121
Danish missionaries 121
Policy of religious toleration 122
Activity of Protestant missions 123
Ecclesiastical establishments 124
Disabilities of Indian Christians 125
Religious festivals and temple endowments . 1 25
Slavery 127
Sacrifice of children at Sagar Island 1 28
Female infanticide 1 29
The question of sati 131
Protests against permission 133
Carey's description 134
The nizamat adalat's report 1 35
The rules of 1812-1815 . . 135
Ewer's remonstrance 137
Other protests 139
Company's orders of 1823 ^39
Ram Mohan Roy's petition 140
Bentinck resolves to prohibit sati 140
CHAPTER VIII
THE COMPANY'S MARINE
By the late S. M. Edwardes, C.S.I., G.V.O.
The Surat squadron 144
Early wars with Gheria 144
The Bombay dockyard 145
Growth of the Marine, 1740-72 146
Capture of the /Janj^CT' 147
Co-operation with Hughes 147
Organisation of the Marine 147
Marine regulations 148
Services in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere 149
The Indian Marine 150
Later developments 151
Marine surveys 151
CONTENTS xiii
CHAPTER IX
THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
By Lt.-Col. Sir Wolesley Haig, K.C.I.E., C.S.I., G.M.G., G.B.E.,
M.A., Lecturer in Persian, in the School of Oriental Studies, in
the University of London.
PAGE
Early garrisons 153
Origin of sepoys 153
Growth of the presidency armies 154
Recruitment of European officers 157
Recruitment of sepoys 158
The reorganisation of 1 796 159
Officers' pay 160
Cadets i6i
Military life 161
Reorganisation of 1824 162
The Barrackpore mutiny 162
European and officers' mutinies 162
The Vellore mutiny 163
The Madras officers' mutiny 163
Local and irregular units 165
Demoralisation of the Bengal army 1 65
CHAPTER X
THE MUTINY
By T. Rice Holmes, M.A., Litt.D.
Revenue causes of discontent 167
Nana Sahib's pension 167
Dalhousie's annexations 168
Railway and telegraph 169
The attitude of the people 169
The Bengal army 171
The general service order 1 72
Proselytising officers 173
The greased cartridges 1 73
Mutiny of the 1 9th and 34th Native Infantry 1 74
Mutiny at Meerut 175
Mutiny at Delhi 177
Indecision of the authorities 177
The position at Agra 178
VAttitude of the civil population 1 79
Conduct of the Indian princes . . 1 79
Tayler at Patna 180
Neill at Benares 181
Allahabad 182
Wheeler at Cawnpore 183
The Cawnpore massacres 183
Lawrence at Lucknow 184
Havelock's campaign 187
xiv CONTENTS
PAGE
Outram joins Havelock 189
Lucknow relieved 190
John Lawrence in the Panjab 190
Siege of Delhi 192
Proposed cession of PeshavNTir 193
Nicholson's march 194
The storm of Delhi 195
Sir Colin Campbell's march to Lucknow 196
Tantia Topi 198
The recovery of Lucknow 199
Canning's proclamation 200
Kunwar Singh 200
Position in Bombay 200
Mutiny in Central India 201
Sir Hugh Rose's campaign 202
Reduction of the Rohilkhand . . . 203
^ The Mutiny not organised 204
Dalhousie unjustly blamed 205
ADMINISTRATIVE DEVELOPMENT, 1858-1918
CHAPTER XI
THE HOME GOVERNMENT, 1858-1918
By Sir H. Verney Lovett, K.G.S.I.
The East India Company's petition 206
Parliamentary bills 207
The Act of 1858 208
The debates 210
The Council of India 212
The Amendment Act of 1869 214
. Lord Salisbury as secretary of state 214
^ General policy of the India Office 215
I Attitude of parliament 216
/ Morley and the Council of India 217
I Lord Crewe's proposed reforms 218
I The changes of 1 9 1 1 . . . 219
I The Mesop>otamia Commission 220
VMontagu's visit to India 222
^The functions of parliament 222
The functions of the crown 225
CHAPTER XII
THE INDIAN GOVERNMENTS, 1858-1918
By Sir H. Verney Lovett, K.C.S.I.
/
The governor-general 226
Canmng's reforms 226
The Councils Act of 1 86 1 228
The portfolio system 229
CONTENTS XY
PAGE
Subsequent changes in the governor-general's council . . . .230
Powers of the governor-general 231
The legislative council of 1853 233
Inclusion of Indian members 234
Other changes in the legislature 235
The home government's control of legislation .237
The Morley-Minto reforms 238
The provincial governments 238
Relations between the central and provincial governments . . . 240
CHAPTER XIII
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL, 1858-1918
By Sir H. Verney Lovett, K.C.S.I.
Changes in the size of the province 245
Position of the magistrate-and-collector 245
Growth of Calcutta 246
Honorary magistrates 246
Courts of law 247
Neglect of Eastern Bengal 247
Communications in the province 248
Tenancy legislation 249
The bhadralok 251
Trade and industry 251
Political agitation and crime . 252
The Bengal District Administration Committee 253
CHAPTER XIV
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY, 1858-1918
By the late S. M. Edwardes, C.S.I. , C.V.O.
Subordinate states in Kathiawar, etc 255
Relations with border states 256
The survey settlement 256
Land-revenue in Sind 257
The presidency government 257
Judicial organisation 259
Revenue administration 261
Port trusts 263
Public works 263
Forests . 264
Education 264
Agriculture 265
Miscellaneous departments 266
xvi CONTENTS
CHAPTER XV
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS, 1858-1918
By A. BUTTERWORTH, C.S.I.
PAGE
Madras during the Mutiny 267
Tidal wave at Masulipatam 267
The Guntur famine 267
Moplah rebellions 268
Troubles in the Circars 268
The Shanar riots 269
Political agitation and crime 270
Judicial organisation 270
Revenue settlement 271
Agriculture 272
Forests 272
Local self-government 273
Communications in the province ... 274
Provincial finance 275
CHAPTER XVI
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED
PROVINCES, CENTRAL PROVINCES, AND
THE PANJAB, 1858-1918
By Sir Patrick Fagan, K.C.I.E.
Crime and police 276
Judicial organisation 277
Scheduled districts 278
Land-revenue administration 278
Tenant-right 281
Record of rights 282
Irrigation 283
Famines 285
Forests 286
Excise 287
Agricultural development 289
Co-operative credit 290
Local self-government 291
The district officer 292
CHAPTER XVII
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE POLICY
By Sir H. Verney Lovett, K.C.S.I.
The rainfall 294
Means of irrigation 295
Early famines in India 296
The Orissa famine 298
The Bihar famine 300
CONTENTS xvii
PAGE
The famine of 1876-8 300
The Strachey Commission 301
The Famine Code 304
Methods of rehef 305
The famine of 1896-7 . 306
The famine of 1 900 307
The MacDonnell Commission 309
The famine of 1907-8 309
The growth of resistance to famine conditions 310
The scarcity ofi9i8 311
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FINANCES OF INDIA, 1858-1918
By H. R. C. Hailey, CLE.
Reorganisation after the Mutiny 314
The revenues 315
Land revenues 315
Opium 316
Salt 316
Customs 316
Miscellaneous 317
Income-tax 317
Public works and irrigation finance 318
Financial decentralisation . . -SiQ
Currency and the fall in silver 320
The course of finance, 1873-93 • 321
Currency reform 322
The gold exchange standard 323
General course of finance, after 1893 325
Revenues, 191 3-14 . . 327
Public debt 327
Development of the currency system 328
War finance 330
CHAPTER XIX
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY, 1858-1918
By Sir H. Verney Lovett, K.C.S.I.
Position after the Mutiny 335
The Departments of Public Instruction . _ 336
The universities 336
The schools 338
General position in 1865-6 339
Progress of western influences . . .341
Obstacles to the spread of rural education . . . . . . . 342
The Aligarh College 344
Female education 345
Chiefs' colleges 345
The Hunter Commission 346
The educational services 348
New universities 348
f
xviU CONTENTS
PAGE
Gur2on*s reforms 349
The Universities Act of 1904 351
The rise of political agitation 352
Problems of the future 355
CHAPTER XX
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
By Sir H. Verney Lovett, K.G.S.I.
The Indian Civil Service 357
Recruitment 358
Indian competition 359
The Statutory Civil Service 360
The uncovenanted civil service 361
The police service 362
The public works department 362
The finance department 363
The forest service 364
Miscellaneous services 364
The Indian Medical Service 365
Regulations regarding admission to the Indian Civil Service . . . 365
The Public Services Conamission of 1886 366
The question of simultaneous examinations 368
Exchange compensation allowances 371
Police reform 372
Reorganisation of the public works department 373
Curzon's other reforms 374
Employment of military officers in civil offices 375
Decline in popularity of the services 375
Public Services Commission of 1912 376
CHAPTER XXI
LAW REFORM
By the late Sir Francis Du Prje Oldfield, LL.M., Professor of
Jurisprudence in the University of Manchester, formerly a
Puisne Judge of the High Court of Madras.
Confusion of the law 379
The Indian High Courts Act of 186 1 380
Later development of the courts 380
The need of codification . . . 381
The Indian law commissions 384
The Civil Procedure and Criminal Procedure Codes 385
Later codes
Revision of the codes 3^
Sources of the codes 387
The use of concrete examples 380
Hindu law 389
The Hindu joint family 390
Hindu testamentary powers 393
Other modifications of Hindu law 394
CONTENTS xix
CHAPTER XXII
THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858-1918
By Sir Wolseley Haig, K.C.I.E., C.S.L, C.M.G., C.B.E., M.A.
PAGE
Transference of the Company's armies . 395
The White Mutiny 395
Reconstitution of the sepoy forces 396
The local and general lists 396
Military establishments 397
Civil employment of military officers 397
Reduction of the Madras sepoy regiments 398
Disappearance of the presidency armies ....... 399
The reorganisation of 1907 400
The Imperial Service Troops 400
Indianisation 401
The reorganisation of 1922 401
FOREIGN POLICY, 1858— 1918
CHAPTER XXIII
CENTRAL ASIA
By H. H. DoDWELL, M.A.
London control of foreign policy 403
Dost Muhammad 404
The Afghan war of succession 405
The policy of masterly inactivity 406
Russian expansion 407
The purposes of Russia 408
Diplomatic discussions 409
Mayo and Sher 'Ali 409
Northbrook and Argyll 410
Seistan Boundary Commission 411
Non-recognition of the Afghan heir 411
Sher 'Ali and Kaufmann 412
Salisbury's policy 412
The occupation of Quetta 414
The proposed Afghan mission 415
The European situation 416
Stolietoff's mission 417
Chamberlain's mission . . . .417
Attitude of the home government 418
The Second Afghan War 419
Cavagnari's murder at Kabul 419
The reoccupation of Kabul 420
Abd-ur-iahman 420
Liberal policy 421
Ripon's settlement 421
Policy of the Second Afghan War 422
Russia and Mr Gladstone 422
XX CONTENTS
PAGE
The Russo- Afghan Boundary Commission 423
The Panjdeh incident 424
Delimitation of the northern Afghan frontier 426
Tibet 426
The Russian railways 428
Habib-ullah 428
The Anglo-Russian Entente 429
The Third Afghan War 430
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
By G. E. Harvey, I.C.S.
King Mindon 432
British agents in Burma 433
Yunnan trade 433
Withdrawal of the residency 434
Thibaw's accession 435
The massacre of the kinsmen 435
The attempts of rivals 436
The Franco-Burmese treaty 437
The Third Burmese War 438
The annexation of Upper Burma 439
The effects of the annexation 440
The government of Lower Burma 441
District administration 442
Recruitment among the Burmese 442
Judicial administration . . 443
Public works department 444
Education 444
Dacoity 445
Immigration 446
Crime 446
Employment of the Burmese 447
CHAPTER XXV
THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843-1918
By C. C. Davies, Ph.D.
The Sind frontier 448
Jacob's policy 449
The Panjab frontier 449
Early Panjab policy and organisation 450
Dera Ghazi Khan, the meeting-place of the two systems .... 452
Reforms, 1872-S 453
Relations with Kalat 454
Sandcman and Baluchistan 455
Possible lines of defence 456
The Indus line 457
CONTENTS xxi
PAGE
The administrative and Durand lines 458
Quetta 458
Kandahar 459
Difficulties of tribal control 460
The forward policy 461
Influence of the amir 46 1
The Durand agreement 462
Chitral 463
Tribal risings of 1897 . 465
Curzon's policy 466
The North-West Frontier Province 467
Tribal customs and the jirga system 470
Land tenures 472
The arms traffic 473
The frontier during the late war 475
CHAPTER XXVI
INDIA AND THE WAR
By L. F. RusHBROOK Williams, M.A., Foreign Minister
to H.H. the Maharaja of Patiala.
The functions of the Indian army 476
Attitude of the princes and the people 477
Failure to take advantage of the initial enthusiasm 478
Services overseas 479
Consequent difficulties of administration 480
Indian recruitment 481
Provision of officers and medical personnel 482
Munitions and supplies 483
Financial help 483
Revolutionary attempts 485
The crisis of 19 18 485
Attitude of the educated classes 486
The declaration of 19 1 7 488
The effects of the war 488
CHAPTER XXVII
THE RELATIONS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF
INDIA WITH THE INDIAN STATES, 1858-1918
By H. H. DoDWELL, M.A.
Position in 1858 489
Peculiarities of the Indian treaties 490
Their constructive interpretation 491
Their confirmation in 1858 492
Attitude of the early viceroys 493
The proclamation and the sanads of adoption . . . . . . 493
The position of the crown 494
xxii CONTENTS
PAGE
Kashmir 495
Successions in the Indian states 496
Their mihtary forces 497
Examples of internal interference : Alwar, Jabwa, Tank and Kalat . . 498
The case of Malhar Rao Gaekwar 499
The rendition of Mysore 501
Common economic interests 503
Obsolescence of the treaties 503
Gurzon's policy 504
Attitude of the princes 500
The Imperial Service Troops 507
The Ghamber of Princes 507
Minto's change of policy 509
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT, 1858-1919
CHAPTER XXVIII
LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
By J. H. Lindsay, M.A.
The ancient village self-government 511
Village organisation 512
The village headman 513
The village police 514
Famine relief 515
Rural boards 516
The Bengal ferry committees 516
Local committees elsewhere 517
Mayo's reforms 517
Ripon's reforms 518
The Bengal Local Self-Government Act 520
Comparative failure of the rural boards 52 1
The presidency towns 523
Justices of the peace 523
The question of conservancy 524
Changes, 1863-7 525
Reform in Bombay 526
Reform in Calcutta 527
Reform in Madras 528
Early committees in the district towns 529
The Municipal Act of 1850 530
Later provincial legislation 531
Ripon s reforms in the municipalities 534
Octroi duties 535
Non-official chairmen 537
CONTENTS xxiii
CHAPTER XXIX
THE NATIONAL CONGRESS AND EARLY
POLITICAL LITERATURE
By Sir Richard Burn, G.S.L
PAGE
Social reforms 538
Surendranath Banerjee . 538
The Ilbert Bill . . .539
The Arya Samaj and Theosophy 539
The National Congress . . 540
The Muslim attitude 541
Dufferin's policy 541
The Act of 1 892 543
The principle of election 545
CHAPTER XXX
THE RISE OF AN EXTREMIST PARTY
By Sir H. Verney Lovett, K.G.S.I.
The influence of the press 548
Reactionary Hinduism 549
B. G. Tilak 549
The murders at Poona 550
The partition agitation in Bengal 551
The appearance of terrorism 552
Unrest in the Panjab 553
The India House conspiracy . . 553
Attitude of the moderates 554
Restrictions on the press 554
The split of the congress • . 555
The prosecution of Tilak 555
Outrages in Bengal 556
Gokhale accepts the reforms 557
Hindu character of the extremist movement 559
CHAPTER XXXI
THE REFORMS OF 1909 /
By Sir Richard Burn, G.S.I.
Lord Minto's appointment 560
Congress proposals 560
Discussions with Morley 561
Repressive measures 562
Minto's proposals 563
Morley's criticisms . . 565
The King's message of 1908 565
The Muslims demand separate representation 566
Discussions in parliament 567
Indian members of council ■ . . . . 569
Method of election 570
Budget procedure , , 572
xxiv CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXXII
POLITICAL MOVEMENTS, 1909-1917
By Sir Richard Burn, C.S.I.
PAGE
Further restrictions on the press . . 574
Political crime 575
The Delhi Durbar . . . . . 575
The change of capital and revocation of the partition of Bengal . . 576
Muslim dissatisfaction 576
Attempt on Lord Hardinge and the spread of revolutionary crime . . 578
Working of the new councils 579
Proposed executive councils in the United Provinces 579
Indians in South Africa 581
Revolutionary attempts during the war 582
The Khilafat agitation 583
The Home Rule League 584
Criticism of the Press Act 584
The Rowlatt Committee and consequent legislation 585
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE REFORMS OF 1919
By Sir Richard Burn, C.S.I.
Sir S. P. Sinha's views 587
Lord Chelmsford's questions 587
The Declaration of 1 91 7 . 589
The Commonwealth of India scheme 589
Mr Curtis 's activities 591
Montagu's visit to India 592
The Montagu-Chelmsford Report 592
The heads of provinces scheme 594
The Southborough Committee 595
TheActofi9i9 595
Dyarchy and finance 596
Changes in the Government of India 598
The Council of State 599
The size of the new councils 599
Communal representation 600
Position of the secretary of state 601
The high commissioner for India 602
Rules under the act 602
Importance of the reforms 603
Bibliographies 605
Chronological Table . 635
Index 639
CHAPTER I
IMPERIAL LEGISLATION AND THE SUPERIOR
GOVERNMENTS, 1818-1857
XHE imperial legislation relating to India in the first half of the
nineteenth century is above all remarkable for the consistency of its
course and the steady development of the policy which it was designed
to promote. From the great India act of 1784 down to the statute
which at last in 1858 abolished the administrative functions of the
East India Company, there was a gradual, persistent evolution, in-
spired by a common group of ideas, directed to a common object, and
founded on principles in origin free alike from heady enthusiasm and
obstinate fear of reformation. The principles were derived from Burke,
but greatly modified by Whig traditions. Burke, of course, though
long a follower of the party, had never been a real Whig. He lacked
the background — the orderly conduct of a great estate — which was
essential to the formation of the true Whig character. His zeal and
sympathy were not balanced by the practical experience of directing
men and managing great affairs. He was a poor judge of character,
unable to detect the shallowness of Francis, and a poor judge of events,
unable to gauge the nature of Indian developments. Neither his
mistaken enthusiasm, nor Fox's party spirit, nor Sheridan's venal
rhetoric, was in fact capable of forming a system on which the nation's
Indian affairs might well and wisely be controlled. That was left to
men who, no longer of the party, had carried with them much more
of its spirit than remained behind. The ideas and purposes of the
legislation carried through by Pitt and Dundas and Buckinghamshire
have already been described. ^ But it will be convenient here to begin
with the ideas of 181 3, for these appear and reappear not only in
legislative principles but also in the actual administration of the period,
so that they form the most appropriate introduction to the present
volume.
The most notable expression given to the ideas current in 181 3 was
assuredly the great speech delivered by Lord Grenville,^ to which
even forty years later men turned back for inspiration and guidance.
Like his successors, he was struck by the strangeness of the task. "On
precedents we can here have no reliance. The situation is new; the
subject on which we are to legislate knows no example. Our former
measures would be deceitful guides." Nor had the time come for any
final regulation of this most perplexing matter. Three points, he
^ Vide V, 313 sgq.y supra.
2 Hansard, xxv, yiosqq.
2 LEGISLATION AND SUPERIOR GOVERNMENTS
said, required special attention. The first was the need of declaring
the sovereignty of the British crown in India, as
the orUy solid basis on which we can either discharge our duties or maintain our
rights The British crown is de facto sovereign in India. How it became so it is
needless to enquire. This sovereignty cannot now be renounced without still greater
evils, both to that country and to this, than even the acquisition of power has ever
yet produced. It must be maintained That sovereignty which we hesitate to
assert, necessity compels us to exercise.
But it should be exercised first to provide for the welfare of the Indian
population, next, but ranking far below the first, to promote the
interests of Great Britain. In Grenville's eyes there was no conflict
between the two. "Pursued with sincerity and on the principles of
a just and liberal policy, there exists between them a close connection,
a necessary and mutual dependence." Oppression must be prevented,
light and knowledge must be diffused. The government must be
separated "from all intermixture with mercantile interests". But it
would be fatal to the constitution of Great Britain if the Company's
patronage were ever vested in the crown or exercised by any political
party. Perhaps, he suggested, writers might be chosen "by free com-
petition and public examination from our great schools and univer-
sities".
The act then passed was far less comprehensive than the speaker
desired. The Company was again entrusted for a further period of
twenty years with the administration of the Indian territories. Its
trade was continued. But it lost the monopoly of the Indian trade;
British-born subjects were to be admitted under less arbitrary re-
strictions; the sovereignty of the British crown was asserted; and
provision was made for the development of an educational policy.
Then with an easier conscience the legislature abandoned for twenty
years the difficult and unfamiliar study of Indian problems. One might
suppose that the words of Grenville had been forgotten. But it was
not so. The general ideas which he expressed continued to dominate
the minds of legislators not only in 1833, but in 1853 as well. The
sovereignty of the crown was not only asserted but was reinforced.
The Company was maintained in its functions, but its structure was
transformed, and its mercantile interests eliminated. Great efforts
were made to improve the administration in India; and at last the
method of selecting the administrative service first advocated by
Grenville was adopted.
But this consistency of effort exhibited also the defects of its qualities.
Admirable as were the idesis of Grenville in their time and place, they
were liable to exhaustion by the development of affairs. The time was
to come when they would be inadequate guides, when they would
need to be replaced by a new set of ideas, when the changes intro-
duced by this consistent policy would require recognition. But un-
luckily the act of 1853 exhibits no inclination to set off on a new
THE REFORMS OF 1833 3
departure. Its changes were few, stereotyped, imperfect. The motive
powers of the ideas underlying it were in fact exhausted, and no new
ideas were as yet powerful enough to take their place.
Neither of the acts of 1833 and 1853 was in any way intended to
be definitive. The need of caution was still deeply felt. As Macaulay
said in the debates on the bill of 1833, "We are trying. . .to give a
good government to a people to whom we cannot give a free govern-
ment". Even James Mill, that zealot of representative institutions,
had declared them to be utterly out of the question. Therefore
we have to engraft on despotism the natural fruits of liberty. In these circumstances,
Sir, it behoves us to be cautious even to the verge of timidity. . . .We are walking
in darkness — we do not distinctly see whither we are going. It is the wisdom of
a man so situated to feel his way, and not to plant hLs foot till he is well assured that
the ground before him is firm. ^
Twenty years later he was still the advocate of reform with caution.
"Such a bill", he declared, "ought to make alterations, and yet it
ought not to be final. The bill. . .ought to be a large yet cautious step
in the path of progress. "^ He seems not to have noticed that the steps
were becoming shorter, or that the rate of progress was slowing down.
The ideas underlying the bill of 1833 were most clearly expressed
in the speech of Charles Grant, afterwards Lord Glenelg, and at
that time president of the Board of Control. The first point which
he emphasised was the need of abolishing the Company's trading
activities and reducing it to a purely administrative body. The union
of the characters of sovereign and trader, he observed, was "calcu-
lated to give a false impression of the character of the government".^
In the second place he put the need of improvement in the govern-
mental machinery in India. The presidency of Fort William was
overgrown and should be divided into two. Perhaps the governor-
general should not be required to supervise the whole conduct of
affairs and at the same time to administer a particular government;
certainly he ought to be invested with higher powers of control over
the subordinate presidencies. In the third place the laws should be
amended, the legislatures improved, the anomalous and conflicting
judicatures reformed. Slavery should be abolished, and Europeans
admitted freely into the country.*
To a large extent these projects were carried into law. "This
political monster of two natures — subject in one hemisphere, sovereign
in another",^ was made much less anomalous by being required with
all convenient speed after 12 April, 1834, to close down its commercial
business, and to pension or otherwise provide for its commercial
servants, under the superintendence of the Board of Control.® Its
capital became a charge on the territorial revenues and provision was
^ Hansard, 3rd Ser. xix, 512-13. ^ Idem, cxxviii, 741.
^ Idem, XVIII, 705. * Idem, xviii, 727 sqq.
^ Macaulay, idem, xix, 509. ® 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85, ss. 4, 6.
1-2
4 LEGISLATION AND SUPERIOR GOVERNMENTS
made for its repayment in forty years, or earlier should the govern-
ment of the Indian territories be taken away from it.^ This was in
fact making leisurely provision for the time when the Company might
at last be aboUshed. But at the moment aboUtion was regarded as
premature, for the old jealousy of the executive was still strong.
Macaulay expressed the general attitude with customary point and
vigour. Authority ought not to be vested in the crown alone, for in
such matters parliament could not provide the necessary criticism and
control.
That this house is, or is ever likely to be, an efficient check on abuses practised in
India, I altogether deny What we want is a body independent of the govern-
ment, and no more than independent — not a tool of the Treasury, not a tool of the
opposition. . . .The Company. . .is such a body.^
The problems connected with the Indian governments were less
easy of solution. The original bill declared that "the whole civil and
military government of all the said territories and revenues in India
shall be. . .vested in a governor-general and counsellors. . .".^ But
this proposal met with criticism in both the Commons and the Lords.
It was felt that it would overwhelm the Supreme Government with
unnecessary detail and strip the subordinate governments of all
authority and credit.^ It was therefore decided to moderate the
section, so as to give the governor-general and council, not the whole
government, but "the superintendence direction and control ".^
Another proposal directed to the same end had also to be materially
modified. The bill proposed that in future the subordinate pre-
sidencies should be administered by governors only, though per-
mitting the Company to appoint councillors where necessary. At the
same time an additional Company's servant was to be added to the
governor-general's council, making four in all, designed (it seems)
to permit the appointment of a representative from each of the four
contemplated presidencies.* This last change would have been a
great improvement, for the governor-general's council possessed no
personal knowledge of the subordinate presidencies. But it was
thought that the change would lead to too much interference on the
part of the central government. The connected proposal to abolish
the subordinate councils was eminently distasteful to the Company,
for it would have diminished the value of its patronage. The addi-
tional Company's servant on the supreme council was therefore
dropped, while the existing form of presidency government was
continued, though the Company was empowered to suspend the
councils or diminish the number of councillors.''
» 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85, ss. 11-17.
" Hansard, 3rd Scr. xdc, 513, 516. * Bill, s. 30,
• Hansard, 3rd Scr. xdc, 543; of. xx, 322.
» 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85, s. 39; cf. s. 65.
• Hansard, 3rd Scr. xvin, 750; Bill, ss. 37, 39, 55, 56.
' 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85, ss. 40, 56, 57.
LEGAL ANOMALIES 5
The draft provisions regarding legislation were more successful in
procuring parliamentary adoption. At this time each of the three
presidencies enjoyed equal legislative powers; though the governor-
general possessed a legal right of veto over the legislation of the
subordinate governments, it had in fact been little exercised. ^ Thus
had come into existence three series of regulations, as these enactments
were called, frequently ill-drawn, for they had been drafted by
inexperienced persons with little skilled advice; frequently conflicting,
in some cases as a result of varying conditions, but in others merely
by accident; and in all cases enforceable only in the Company's courts
because they had never been submitted to and registered by the king's
courts. Besides these were the uncertain bodies of Muslim and Hindu
law, uncertain because of a variety of texts and interpretations, and
still more uncertain because of the varying application which they
received in the courts themselves. Lastly came English statute and
common law and equity, applied by the king's courts. These con-
flicting series of laws were enforceable by two different and generally
hostile judicatures, with ill-defined jurisdictions. In general the king's
courts exercised jurisdiction within the limits of the presidency towns
of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, while the Company's courts
exercised jurisdiction over the dependent territories. But apart from
this territorial jurisdiction, the king's courts possessed a personal
jurisdiction over British-born subjects, in some cases involving juris-
diction over Indian-born subjects. This particular aspect of the
matter was clearly destined to be of growing importance. The doors
of India, as the directors said, were to be "unsealed for the first time
to British subjects of European birth ". Englishmen, who had till then
resided in India on sufferance, were to acquire a right to reside and
even to acquire land there. Since the Company's trade was to cease,
a large number of merchants and traders were expected to settle in
India to take advantage of the change. 2 It was evidently inexpedient
that the two classes of subjects, Indian and English, should continue
to live under separate laws administered by separate courts or that the
latter when accused of wronging the former, or accusing the former
of wrong, should be able to insist on the issue being tried by a strange,
unsuitable and probably very distant court.
For these various and cogent reasons it was resolved to modify the
legislative authority in India, to extend its legislative competence,
and to prepare for a general reform of the judicial system. The
subordinate governments, it was felt, should lose their legislative
authority altogether — a measure which appears the more natural
when it is remembered that it was also intended at first to abolish
their councils. The existence of three legislatures had added much to
the complexity of the legal system, the simplification of which would
^ Hansard, 3rd Ser. xviii, 727.
* Dispatch to the Government of India, 10 December, 1834 (Ilbert, ist ed. Appendix).
6 LEGISLATION AND SUPERIOR GOVERNMENTS
be aided by concentrating all legislative authority in a single body.
This change was also supported by the proposed extension of power,
which parliament would concede least unreadily to the governor-
general and his council. It was therefore decided to transfer all power
of making laws to them ; and it was thought that the need of special
laws to suit local peculiarities would be sufficiently met by empowering
the presidency governments to submit to the governor-general and
council draft laws to be enacted or not as might seem best.^
The powers granted to the governor-general and council were much
wider than any till then entrusted to an Indian legislature. They
could make laws to repeal, amend or alter
any laws or regulations whatever now in force or hereafter to be in force in the said
territories . . . , and to make laws and regulations for all persons, whether British
or native, foreigners or others, and for all courts of justice, whether established by
His Majesty's charters or otherwise, and the jurisdiction thereof,
except that they could not modify the new act, the mutiny act, any
future act of parliament relating to India, or the sovereignty of the
crown. But apart from this limitation all their acts should possess
"the same force and effect" as any act of parliament, and "shall be
taken notice of by all courts of justice whatsoever within the said
territories ".2
These were full powers for a dependent legislature. Their particular
importance lay, however, in one main point. Till 1833 no Indian
legislation had the least effect in the Supreme Courts. It is true that
provision had been made by which an Indian regulation would
become binding on those courts once it had been registered by them.
But such registration had lain wholly within the pleasure of the courts
themselves; and the Indian governments had steadily refused to
recognise the veto in effect entrusted to the courts by refusing to
submit their acts for registration. Their legislation had thus been
binding on Indian residents outside the presidency towns and on the
Company's courts established in the Mufassal, but not binding on
either Indian or European residents at government headquarters or
the king's courts established there. Now it became equally binding
on all classes of inhabitants, whatever their place of residence, and
on all courts of law, whatever the authority by which they were
constituted. In order to complete its powers the new legislature was
authorised to modify or define the jurisdiction even of courts erta-
blished by royal charter, though the latter might not be abolished
without the previous sanction of the home authorities.^
One object of the earlier statutes requiring regulations to be
registered in the Supreme Courts before becoming enforceable in the
presidency towns had been to secure the criticism of the respective
benches before the laws adopted by the Company's governments
> 5 & 4 Will. rV, c. 85, ss. 59, 65. « Identy ss. 43, 45.
' Idemt 8. 46.
THE LAW MEMBER 7
became universally valid. Experience had indeed shown that the
presidency governments needed more expert advice on legislative
drafts than could be provided by law officers chosen from the local
bar. The new act for the first time made provision for this. An
additional member of council was to be appointed by the Company
with the approval of the crown. The definition of his qualifications
was purely negative. He was not to be a member of the Company's
civil or military service. The only formal indication of the part he
was to play consisted in the declaration that he was to have rights
of speech and vote only at meetings of the council for the consideration
of legislative business.^ The office thus obscurely defined was that of
law member. The appointment was important in two ways. It con-
stituted the first step taken in India towards the establishment of a
legislature separate from the executive; and it provided the council
with a legal expert to criticise, amend or draft legislative proposals.
"The concurrence of the fourth member of council may be wanting to a law ", wrote
the directors, "and the law may be good still; even his absence at the time of
enactment will not vitiate the law; but parliament manifestly intended that the
whole of his time and attention, and all the resources of knowledge or ability
which he may possess, should be employed in promoting the due discharge of the
legislative functions of the council. He has indeed no pre-eminent control over
the duties of this department, but he is peculiarly charged with them in all their
ramifications. "2
And although he was entitled to sit and vote only when laws were
under consideration, the Company advised that he should be per-
mitted to sit at the executive meetings of the council.
"An intimate knowledge", it wrote, "of what passes in council will be of essential
service to him in the discharge of his legislative functions. Unless he is in the habit
of constant communication and entire confidence with his colleagues ; unless he is
familiar with the details of internal administration, with the grounds on which the
government acts and with the information by which it is guided, he cannot
possibly sustain his part in the legislative conferences or measures, with the know-
ledge, readiness and independence essential to a due performance of his duty."^
The advice was followed. Macaulay (the first law member) and his
successors were summoned to the ordinary as well as to the legislative
meetings.
The third measure taken in this connection was the creation of an
entirely new body. The governor-general in council was directed
to appoint "Indian law commissioners", who were to enquire into
the jurisdiction, powers and rules of all courts and police-establish-
ments, all forms of judicial procedure, and the nature and operation
of all laws, civil and criminal, written or customary, and to propose
any necessary alterations, due regard being had to the rules of caste,
and the religions and manners of the people. They were to follow
such instructions as they should receive from the governor-general
in council, and to draw the pay that the latter should appoint in the
' 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85, s. 40. ^ Dispatch, lo December, 1834, ut supra. * Idem.
8 LEGISLATION AND SUPERIOR GOVERNMENTS
scale next below that enjoyed by members of council.^ Thus came
into existence the first Indian Law Commission. It was designed to
fulfil a double object — to unravel the tangle of existing laws and to
aulvise on new projects of legislation. In both points the new body
(over which Macaulay and his successors presided without additional
pay) achieved much. It was employed by the new legislature to
consider and report on projected laws submitted by the subordinate
governments, and its reports form an interesting and very valuable
part of the legislative proceedings of the period. But its other and
indeed its principal object proved more difficult than had been
expected. Macaulay in 1833, with his usual lucid and specious gift
of statement, persuaded himself and the House of Commons that the
ideal moment had come in which to codify the Indian laws, and that
codification would be a relatively easy, rapid process, which should
be undertaken without delay. When he became law member, and
presided over the commission, he laboured hard to fulfil his promises.
He produced the first draft of the Penal Code. But that remained
a project until, having been reconsidered, amended, and much
improved, it was at last enacted in 1861. The first Indian Law Com-
mission thus only laid foundations on which other legislators were to
build.
The act of 1833 dealt with two other matters of great importance
— the mode of administering the presidency of Fort WilHam and the
position and recruitment of the Company's civil service. Reform of the
government of Bengal was long overdue. The conquests and policy
of Wellesley had greatly expanded the territories of a province already
over-large. The Agra districts not only lay at a great distance from
the centre of government but also included the imperial city of
Delhi adjacent to the powerfiil state of Ranjit Singh in the Panjab.
Need therefore existed of a strong and vigilant local authority. Nor
was this all. The governor-general in council was responsible for
the general administration and policy of all British India as well as
for the particular administration of Bengal. This burden was in fact
more than he could bear. The detail of Bengal administration tended
therefore to be relegated to subordinate authorities. The Bengal
Board of Revenue acted largely as the government of the province.
A great part of the administration was thus entrusted to revenue
servants bred up in a revenue system which more than any other
discouraged famiHarity with the customs and life of the people.
To this unfortunate system, the evils of which were at the time but
partially recognised, the act applied two palliatives. It declared that
the territories under the presidency of Fort William were to be divided
into two governments. 2 This involved the appointment of a separate
governor, but did not necessitate the appointment of a council.^
1 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85, as. 53-5. » Idem, s. 38.
• Id$m, 8s. 56, 57.
BENGAL 9
In regard to the dual position of the governor-general in council,
though Charles Grant had half-admitted the evils of the existing
system/ nothing useful was done. The governor-general was declared
the governor of the Bengal Presidency. This involved a ridiculous
complication of functions. Till the passing of the act of 1833 the
governor-general of Bengal in council had also been the superin-
tending government of all British India. But now, in order to mark
the new powers and sta!us of the superintending government, it
received a new designation — the governor-general of India in
council 2 — so that while the governor-general and council had
become the central government, the governor-general alone con-
stituted the government of Bengal. The governor-general in council
thus had powers of superintendence, direction and control over the
governor-general, while the governor of Bengal could overrule the
council of India. "A state of things may perhaps occur", the Com-
pany observed, "which may in some cases occasion embarrassment."*
However, another section of the act permitted the governor-general
in council to appoint an ordinary member of council deputy-governor
of Bengal ; and in actual practice the senior ordinary member was
generally so appointed. This avoided the absurdity of the legal posi-
tion ; but did nothing to improve the administration of the province,
which remained under a minimum of supervision for another twenty
years. In these matters the provisions of the act were far from ade-
quate to the needs of the country.
In regard to the recruitment of the Company's civil service the act
contained provisions of far-reaching but not immediate importance.
As has already been noted, Lord Grenville twenty years earlier had
suggested competition as providing the best means of recruitment.
This project was now introduced in a carefully limited form. The act
directed that estimates of probable vacancies in the civil service should
be sent to England annually; the estimates were to be considered by
the board, which was to certify to the court of directors what number
of nominations — not less than four times the number of expected
vacancies — might be made. The nominees were then to be examined
under rules to be made by the board and a quarter selected for
admission to the Company's college at Haileybury. After three years'
studies there, they were to be re-examined and the appointments
made accordingly.* This system, had it been carried into operation,
would have preserved the advantages of nomination while it intro-
duced those of competition. It would have excluded the bad bargains
who have always been the misfortune of every system of patronage ;
it would also have excluded the very clever men, with no interest in
India but as a field for their talents, who have been the bane of the
system of open competition. Unfortunately the directors of the day
1 Hansard, 3rd Ser. xvin, 727. ^ 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85, s. 39.
' Dispatch, 10 December, 1834, ut supra. * 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85, ss. 103-8.
10 LEGISLATION AND SUPERIOR GOVERNMENTS
felt more acutely the diminution in the value of their patronage than
the advantage of being obliged to exercise their patronage wisely.
They hated this infringement of their former privilege. They were
quite incapable of rebutting the eloquent arguments with which in
the House of Commons Macaulay developed, amplified and defended
the plan which he had borrowed and adapted from Grenville's original
proposal. But though they might be reduced to silence, their hearts
were obstinately unconvinced. In the following year they succeeded
in persuading the easy-going president of the board to move an
amending bill permitting them to defer the execution of these
directions. Macaulay, the one convinced and influential advocate of
the competitive principle, had then left England to take up his new
office of law member. The proposal was thus smuggled through with
little consideration, and the first serious attempt to trench upon the
directors' privilege ended ignominiously and without trial. This was
a great misfortune. Unrestricted competition, as afterwards adopted,
has not lacked its disadvantages. But the plan of 1833 might have
worked greatly to the welfare of India.
Beside this fruitless provision should be set another, equally bene-
volent and even less operative. No Indian subject of the crown
"by reason only of his religion, place of birth, descent, colour, or any
of them", should "be disabled from holding any place, office, or
employment under the said Company". ^ Clearly this did not mean,
and was not designed to mean, that all oflfices were in future to be
thrown open indiscriminately to Indians. The clause of the act of
1 793 declaring that none but covenanted servants of the Company
could hold any civil office carrying over ;,(^8oo a year salary still
remained law;^ so that except for the new councillorship, which W2is
evidently intended to effect a very different object,^ none of the
higher civil offices were in law open to Indians until Indians were
included in the covenanted civil service. The object of the section, 21s
the directors rightly observed, was
not to ascertain qualification, but to remove disqualification. It does not break
down or derange the scheme of our government as conducted principally through
the instrumentality of our regular servants. . . . But the meaning of the enactment
we take to be that there shall be no governing caste in British India; that whatever
other tests of qualification may be adopted, distinctions of race or religion shall
not be of the number. . . . You well know, and indeed have in some important
respects carried into effect, our desire that natives should be admitted to places of
trust as freely and extensively as a regard for the due discharge of the functions
attached to such places will permit. . . . Fitness is henceforth to be the criterion of
eligibility.. . .There is one practical lesson which. . .the present subject suggests to
us once more to enforce. While on the one hand it may be anticipated that the
range of public situations accessible to the natives and mixed races will gradually
be enlarged, it is, on the other hand, to be recollected that, as settlers from Europe
find their way into the country, this class of persons will probably furnish candidates
for those very situations to which the natives and mixed races will have admittance.
» 3 & ^ Will. IV, c. 85, s. 87. « 33 Geo. Ill, c. 52, s. 57.
• Cf. Hansard, 3rd Scr. xix, 664.
SLAVERY II
Men of European enterprise and education will appear in the field ; and it is by
the prospect of this event that we are led particularly to impress the lesson already
alluded to on your attention. In every view it is important that the indigenous
people of India, or those among them who by their habits, character or position
may be induced to aspire to office, should as far as possible be qualified to meet
their European competitors.^
The clause therefore became the basis of that educational policy
which took shape, in the years immediately following, under the
influence of Macaulay more than any other individual.
At a time when the slave question was so prominently in the minds
of all men, it was inevitable that the act should attempt to deal with
slavery in India. The act as originally introduced directed that
slavery in the Company's territories should be brought to an end by
12 April, 1837, or earlier if possible. ^ A little consideration, however,
soon made it evident that the question of slavery in India was a
different matter from slavery in the West Indies. In India it was
complicated by caste, by Hindu custom, by Muslim law. A greater
latitude of action was therefore accorded to the government of India.
Instead of requiring abolition by a fixed date, the act only directed
the governor-general in council to take the matter into considera-
tion, to mitigate the position of slaves in India as soon as possible,
and to abolish slave status at the earliest practicable moment. ^ The
Company's instructions under this head were shrewd and cautious.
It pointed out that remedial measures should be so framed as to leave
untouched the authority recognised by both Hindu and Muslim law
in the heads of families. Of real slavery in India, predial slavery
occurred only in certain limited areas, while domestic slavery was
mild. The first reform which it recommended was to make the
punishment of injuries inflicted on slaves as heavy as if they had been
inflicted on free persons; while it was suggested that emancipation
should only be effected where it was desired by the slave, and should
always be "a judicial proceeding, investigated and decided by the
judge".* In social as in political affairs, India was not to be made the
subject of wholesale experiments.
As a whole the act, while very imperfect, was permeated by the
liberal ideas of the age, and some contemporary comment fell far
short of justice. Shore, for example, who should have known better,
observed, "Provided each party could gain its own selfish and short-
sighted objects, the government of India was thrown into the bargain
with as much indifference as if the people in question had been a herd
of cattle".^ The act which approached the slavery question with wise
caution, which sought to introduce competition into the recruitment
of the civil service, which abolished the Company's trading rights, and
envisaged though in an over-sanguine spirit the increased employ-
^ Dispatch, 10 December, 1834, ut supra. ^ Bill, s. 88.
^ 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85, s. 88. * Dispatch, 4 December, 1834, ut supra.
^ Notes on Indian Affairs^ i, 390.
12 LEGISLATION AND SUPERIOR GOVERNMENTS
ment of Indians and the reform of the Indian law, was a good deal
more than a corrupt bargain between two parties in the British
parliament. Its defects were of a very different nature. It did not
sufficiently reorganise the Indian government. The governor-general
should, as had been at first proposed, have been given the assistance
of a councillor from each presidency, and should have been wholly
freed from the duties of local administration in Bengal. Legislation
and administration were both over-centralised. In short the act
imposed on the government of India duties too extensive and detailed
to be carried out by a single group of men. It was probable, there-
fore, that the coming years would be marked by an excessive uni-
formity of policy and a decline in the efficient working of the adminis-
trative machine, due to the development of centralisation in advance
of communications.
The Home Government under the act remained almost as it had
been before, though it was in fact little understood. Indeed the
debates of 1853, when the constitution came up once more for recon-
sideration, revealed the most singular differences of opinion. Some
declared that India had been governed by the board, others that it
had been governed by the Company. In one way at all events the
provisions of the statutes had been considerably modified by usage.
The offices of governor-general, of governor, and of fourth member
of the governor-general's council, were to be filled by the Company's
appointment, subject to the approval of the crown. Further pro-
vision had been made in 1833 that vacant governorships or seats in
council must be filled by the Company within two months after the
receipt of the notification, otherwise its right of appointment would
pass to the crown, and persons so appointed would not be liable to
recall by the Company.^ It was therefore expected that normally
names would be proposed by the directors for the approval of the
minister, who would exercise a veto over their proposals. But the
time limit of two months, within which the directors had to propose
an acceptable name unless they were to forfeit that exercise of their
patronage, greatly though perhaps undesignedly increased the
minister's influence in this matter; with the result that in practice
names came to be proposed by the minister, and the Company's
power of appointment came to be in effect a right of veto. ^
This became evident almost as soon as the act came into force.
Bentinck announced his intention of coming home, and the directors
were eager to secure the succession as governor-general to their very
distinguished servant, Sir Charles Metcalfe. Charles Grant, still
president of the board, objected, and a long correspondence ensued,
in the course of which the limited two months almost passed away,
and finally the chairman of the court was reduced to writing to the
president of the board that he could not accede to any further delay
1 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85, s. 60. * Gf. Hansard, 3rd Scr. cxxdc, 48.
THE COMPANY AND THE BOARD 13
in proposing the name of a possible successor.^ The power of nomina-
tion had already passed out of the Company's hands.
While this question was still at issue, a change of ministry took
place, Lord Heytesbury was proposed by the new president and
accepted by the court of directors. But before Heytesbury had sailed
for India, Melbourne came back into office and resolved that a
ministerial supporter should be rewarded with the governor-general-
ship of India. This was described as a marked breach of precedents.
But while it was agreed that a governor-general exercising his office
in India should not be recalled by a mere change of ministry at home,
it was much less clear that a governor-general who had not yet sailed
from England should as a thing of course be permitted to take up his
office under a government other than that which had nominated him.
The earlier cases — Minto's and Bentinck's — did not illustrate this
position at all. The court of directors did their utmost to prevent
Melbourne from acting on his resolve. They declared their fear and
alarm at any measure which would render "the high and responsible
station of governor-general of India subservient to political purposes
in this country". 2 But in such cases they were really helpless and
were obliged to acquiesce in a change. The discussions ended in the
selection of the unfortunate Auckland as the new governor-general.
The reader must not, however, hastily conclude that the Board
of Control could impose the man of its choice on the court of
directors. The latter possessed and retained down to the end of its
political existence the power of recalling any office-holder in India,
including all governors and the governor-general himself. Even the
most aggressive of presidents was therefore obliged to refrain from
proposing persons who would be really unwelcome to the court of
directors. On at least two occasions within the period covered by the
present chapter was the recall of the governor-general seriously con-
sidered, and on one of these it was actually effected. The first case was
that of Lord Amherst. In 1825, when the news of the Burma War
was followed by that of the Sepoy mutiny at Barrackpore, the directors
were so seriously disturbed at the course events were taking that they
debated the propriety of recalling the governor-general immediately.
The president of the board, Wynn, being unable to dissuade them
from this course, Canning was employed to take the matter up with
them, in Lord Liverpool's absence; and he succeeded in smoothing
matters over with a promise that the papers should be laid before the
Duke of Wellington for his opinion. ^ The second case was that of
Lord Ellenborough in 1844. Despite his great talents Lord Ellen-
borough notably lacked the art of managing others. On arriving in
India he speedily quarrelled with the whole civil service, preferring
to employ soldiers wherever he had any choice, conducting his
* Kaye, Life of Tucker^ p. 480. * Kaye, op. cit. p. 460.
* Canning to Liverpool, 3 October, 1825. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS, 38193, f. 233.
14 LEGISLATION AND SUPERIOR GOVERNMENTS
political correspondence through his private, instead of through the
political, secretary, and quitting Calcutta in order that he might
avoid having to communicate his plans to the members of his council.
This not only increased the difficulties of his work in India, but also
indisposed the directors who resented the slight thus cast upon their
relations and proteges. Incidentally the same cause inspired the
peculiar acrimony with which Kaye, usually a fair-minded man,
approached every aspect of Ellenborough's conduct. Then too, the
governor-general's impulsive character could not submit to be bound
even by the rules which he himself had laid down. When president
of the board in 1830 he had ordered that no public works costing
over 10,000 rupees should be undertaken without the previous
sanction of the East India Company; but now he established new
and expensive cantonments on his own authority.^ His Sind policy
provoked strong criticism. Above all he regarded both the Board of
Control and the court of directors with a scorn far too great to be
concealed. 2 In 1843 his close friend, Wellington, had urged him
earnestly to display greater prudence.^ But this was in vain. Early
in the following year the directors resolved that he should be recalled.
Though there was much truth in the queen's view that this was unwise
and ungrateful,* the governor-general's conduct had exhibited too
many irregularities for the ministry to be able to make any effective
defence. Peel therefore acquiesced in his recall, but at the same time
gave him a step in the peerage and the Grand Cross of the Bath. With
these solatia Ellenborough came home.
In its way this episode was as significant as Auckland's appointment
had been. If the latter showed that the ministry possessed the real
power of nomination, the former proved that the Company's veto
was no empty form, for no ministry would venture to insist on tlie
appointment of a governor-general or governor who might be recalled
before he had even landed in India.
In fact the Company retained and continued to exercise a con-
siderable share in the authority exercised by the Home Government.
It is true that matters of foreign policy, of war, peace, and alliances,
had slipped altogether from its control; and the only way in
which it could mark its disapproval was the extreme course of
recalling a peccant governor-general. As Wood observed in the
debates of 1853, the responsibility for Indian foreign policy lay
exclusively with the president of the board and through him with the
cabinet.** But in fact this was the branch of policy in which an
effective home control was least practicable. Macaulay's words —
"India is and must be governed in India. This is a fundamental law
which we did not make, which we cannot alter, and to which we
* Cf. Colchester, Ellenborough's Indian Administration, p. 369.
• Law, India under Lord Ellenborough, pp. 104, 165. * Colchester, ut supra.
« Queen Victoria's Letters, 11, 9. » Hansard, 3rd Ser. cxxix, 764.
THE COMPANY AND THE BOARD 15
should do our best to conform our legislation" — while generally true,
were peculiarly true of foreign affairs. The war in Sind, the war with
Sindhia, the war with Burma, the wars with the Sikhs, were begun,
conducted, and concluded on the responsibility of the governor-
general of the day. So that the province in which at London the
authority of the board was uncontested was also that in which its
authority could be least exercised.
In all other matters the policy of the court of directors had to be
taken into serious consideration. The actual relations between the
court and the board in this period cannot be determined with pre-
cision, for the original and vital conferences, in which their respective
views were stated and discussed between the president and the chairs,
have left no record other than an occasional private letter. Regular
documentary evidence (in the "previous communications") only
appears as a rule when the principal points of difference have been
cleared away. The best account (so far as the present writer is aware)
of these relations is contained in a letter of St George Tucker, who
had enjoyed prolonged experience in his repeated tenure of the chair-
manship of the Company.
*'The Board", he writes, "have. . .a general and absolute restraining power; but
they cannot propel us forwards if we choose to resist. Our vis inertiae alone is sometimes
sufficient to arrest their proceedings. The present government have on more than
one occasion resorted to a high judicial tribunal for the purpose of coercing us by
a mandamus', but they signally failed. On a late occasion they ordered us to dismiss
all the judges of our court of Sudder Diwanny Adawlut (the head court of appeal
in Bengal) — we refused — they threatened to dismiss them by their own authority —
they were told that this could only be done by a mandate of recall under the sign
manual; but they were not prepared to undertake such a responsibility, and the
case was closed by a peevish censure.
"The court of directors still by law retain the initiative; and although by the
connivance of their organs this privilege may be rendered of no avail, it has hereto-
fore been asserted with very salutary effect. We are also at liberty to protest, and
to expose to public view instances of maladministration; so that, as long as the
court shall be filled by independent and honourable men, they may, not only by
their knowledge and experience, assist in giving a proper direction to the machine
of government, but they can also exert a wholesome influence in checking the
career of an unscrupulous government."^
Tucker's letter ends on a melancholy note. " I feel most painfully",
he adds, *'that we are gradually sinking." There was, no doubt,
a steady growth during the twenty years following 1833 of the idea
that direct crown government was the inevitable and desirable end.
In 1833 that idea had been cherished by extremists on the one side
like Ellenborough and on the other like J. S. Buckingham. In 1853
the idea was much more widely held. That fact of itself would no
doubt have tended to make the president of the board more assertive
of his powers and more disposed to push them to their extreme length.
But the position of the Company seems to have remained strong
1 Kaye, op. cit. p. 483.
1 6 LEGISLATION AND SUPERIOR GOVERNMENTS
enough to permit an obstinate resistance. At all events the legislators
of 1853 clearly felt that the Company would not decline into a mere
consultative council without a material change in the existing law.
The new act provided for the reduction of the directors from twenty-
four to eighteen, and for the immediate appointment of three (rising
gradually to six) by the crown. Since at the same time the quorum
of directors was lowered from thirteen to ten, it would be possible for
the crown nominees to constitute the majority in a thinly attended
court. ^ The intention evidently was to prepare for the time when the
Company should lapse and its functions be entrusted to a consultative
council. This was frankly recognised in debate. Sir James Graham,
for example, "beheved that the introduction into the direction of a
small proportion of directors nominated by the crown would form the
nucleus of a consultative body hereafter which should be the council
of the sole minister of India named by the crown ".2 It is clear
therefore that the plan which was adopted in 1858 was no newly
found expedient, but rather a solution towards which men had been
consciously working.
Affairs in another direction also had moved so far as to abrogate
the chief reason which had demanded the maintenance of the
Company. Ever since 1781 the main obstacle to the Company's
abolition had been the exercise of the Indian patronage, which no
one save Fox had dared seek to appropriate. Grenville in 181 3 had
indicated an avenue of escape from the dilemma. Macaulay in 1 833
had attempted to open up the avenue. Now in 1853 it was decreed
that the directors' patronage should cease, that the Board of Control
should prepare rules for the examination of candidates for the civil
service, that all natural-born subjects of Her Majesty should be
eligible to compete, subject to the rules that the board should prepare,
and that all appointments should be made on the results of the
examination.^ Given the success of this experiment, men naturally
began to look for the disappearance of the Company according to
plan in 1873. The Mutiny merely accelerated the foregone and care-
fully anticipated course of events.
Two other small points show how definitely opinion had developed.
When the presidency of the Board of Control had been first instituted,
it had been held in conjunction with other important offices, and
carried a salary of ^(^2000 a year. When in 1810 it had come to be held
alone, the pay had been raised to ;;(^5000, but in 1831 "in a hot fit of
economy"* had been reduced to £3500. It was pointed out that the
post had become either a mere stepping-stone to something better or
a refuge for the poHtically needy, that the president "did not fill that
office in the cabinet which he ought to do", that there would be
constitutional objections to making him a secretary of state, but that
* 16 & 17 Vic. c. 95, ss. 2-6. * Hansard, 3rd Ser. cxxix, 70.
• 16 & 17 Vic. c. 95, ss. 36-42. * Hansard, 3rd Ser. cxxdc, 38.
LEGISLATION 17
at all events his salary should be raised to the same level. ^ It was
therefore resolved that his salary should not be less than that of a
secretary of state^ — another preparatory step for the change of 1858.
At the same time the approval of the crown became in future necessary
for all appointments of councillors, whether to the governor-general's
council or to those of the subordinate governments.
The act of 1853 thus strengthened the position of the crown half of
the Home Government and reflected the growing anticipation of the
time when it would be the sole organ of government. Other pro-
visions dealt with the government in India. Some of the most
important modified the governor-general's council. The law member
became an ordinary member, entitled to speak and vote at all meetings,
legislative or executive, of the council,^ thus removing a disability
against which Macaulay had strongly protested. The legislative
authority of the governor-general was materially enlarged. Under
the act of 1833, while the governor-general at executive meetings
could act with one member only and could overrule the decisions
taken by a majority, at legislative meetings his presence was not
necessary, these three ordinary members could act without him, and
he had merely a casting vote. Under the new act no law was to have
force until it had received his assent, so that he was given a power of
veto which till then had been lodged only in the home authorities.
A long step was also made towards further differentiating the legis-
lature from the executive. Under the act of 1833 the distinction
between the two had consisted only in the right of the law member
to speak and vote. Now a large relative increase in the council was
made for legislative purposes. Certain additional persons were to be
added under the statutory title of "legislative councillors". These
were to consist of a member nominated by each governor or lieutenant-
governor, from among the civil servants of at least ten years' standing,
the chief juHice of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, one of the puisne
judges of the court, and, if the Company authorised the step, two
more civil servants of at least ten years' standing nominated by the
governor-general.* Thus the legal element was greatly strengthened^
and new provincial elements appeared. An attempt was made in
committee in the House of Commons to amend the section so as to
introduce on to the council European and Indian non-officials. But
this proposal was defeated by the opposition of the president of the
board. Sir Charles Wood, who, while favouring the extension of the
administrative employment of Indians, declared truly enough that
no two Indians could be found to represent adequately the diversity
of Hindu and Muslim society.^ It was afterwards averred that the
absence of Indians on the legislative council had facilitated legislation,
^ Hansard, 3rd Ser. cxxix, 822, 854. ^ 16 & 17 Vic. c. 95, s. 33.
^ Idem, s. 21. * Identf s. 22.
^ Hansard, 3rd Ser. cxxix, 418 sgq.
1 8 LEGISLATION AND SUPERIOR GOVERNMENTS
which by algirming Hindu sentiment had assisted to provoke the
Mutiny. But that criticism, while just in itself, probably misses the
principal defect of the new arrangement. The natural English desire
to create an Indian legislature visibly separate from the executive led
inevitably to the formation of a body free in theory but shackled in
practice. There was in fact no immediate need to separate executive
and legislature. A method, preferable because more elastic and more
eaisily capable of development, would have been to leave the actual
legislative organ untouched, but to have attached to it a consultative
committee, on which many classes and interests could have been
represented and on which there would have been no need of that
irritating official bloc, the sole purpose of which was to preserve the
executive control over legislation in bodies which had been tech-
nically invested with legislative power.
Another change of some interest in the legislative sphere was also
made. The former act had authorised the establishment of law com-
missioners in India mainly in order to accomplish the codification of
Indian law. This body, though far from inactive, had achieved little
beyond drafts that still awaited final revision. Owing to complaints
from the government of India that it cost far more than it was worth,
it had not been maintained at its full strength, and had been reduced
to one member and a secretary in addition to the law member of
council who acted as its president.^ The new act therefore recited the
fact that, although numerous reports had been sent to England, no
final decision on them had been taken, and authorised the crown to
appoint persons in England to examine these recommendations and
such other matters as might be referred to them with the approval of
the board, and to report what legislation might be expedient. ^
The Law Commission was thus reconstituted and transferred from
Calcutta to London. This change led to mixed good and evil. As will
be seen from a later chapter,^ it at last led to the enactment of codes
— the Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code, the Civil Procedure
Code — which form landmarks in the history of Indian legislation.
But its establishment carried with it a hint of a changing attitude
towards the legislative authority. The Home Government now had
to its hand an instrument by which at more than one period they
hoped to control not merely the general policy but also the detail of
legislative enactments. From the first Wood seems to have regarded
the new legislative council as a tool for the shaping of his projects,
and speedily fell out with Dalhousie over the degree of authority and
independence which the legislative council should enjoy,* and though
in 1861 the authority of the council was materially reduced, like
disputes broke out between the Duke of Argyll and Lord Mayo.^
* Hansard, 3rd Ser. cxxdc, 562.
* 16 & 17 Vic. c. 05, s. 28. • Vide pp. 379 sqq.y infra.
* Lcc-Warncr, L\fe of Dalhousie, n, 236. • Pari. Papers, 1876, lvi, 22 sqq.
COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS ig
The changes introduced into the administrative structure in India
were similarly mixed. The great province of Bengal was at last
provided with a separate government. The act permitted the appoint-
ment of a special governor or lieutenant-governor. ^ The latter, as
the cheaper appointment, was of course preferred. Provision was
also made for the creation of a new province if necessary. ^ But against
these improvements must be set the change made in the relative pay
of lieutenant-governors and of ordinary members of the governor-
general's council. Till 1853 membership of the latter had been the
highest point within reach of the civil service. But now the annual
salary of the councillor was reduced to 80,000 rupees, while that of
the lieutenant-governor was raised to 100,000. The ill-effects of this
alteration still continue to be felt. The governor-general was deprived,
or relieved, of that independent, disinterested advice which might be
expected so long as his council did not look to him for further promo-
tion and dignity. But now the councillors were by law provided with
a motive for acquiescing wherever possible with the governor-general's
views, and the council of the Supreme Government lost the supreme
position commensurate with its dignity and duties.
In another respect also the act led up to an unfortunate situation.
Macaulay declared he was disposed to judge the bill by the effect
which he anticipated from the introduction of open competition on
the civil service. He seized the .occasion to deliver a most eloquent
defence of that system of selecting public servants. ^ Lord Stanley in
committee drew pointed attention to one weak side of the plan.
Unlimited competition which, in fact, would exclude all Indians
from participating he regarded as a step back, not a step forward,
for, he said, "while the old system could not have been permanent,
the present plan would not be felt as an abuse in this country, what-
ever it might be in India, and it would therefore be allowed to con-
tinue without improvement".^ But this forecast, which subsequent
events confirmed in every letter, fell unregarded.
It has been said that this act of 1853 was mainly based on a memo-
randum prepared by Dalhousie in 1852.^ That does not seem to have
been the view of Dalhousie himself "The India bill is a wretched
thing", he exclaims; "no wonder Lord John wished to have nothing
to do with it. "6 Its great fault lay in its clinging too closely to the
ideas which forty years earlier had been wise, far-sighted, liberal,
which even twenty years before had been sound and progressive, but
which had come to need a revision, expansion, reorientation, which
they were not destined to find, either in 1853 or in 1858.
^ 16 & 17 Vic. c. 95, s. 16. 2 Idern^ s. 17.
' Hansard, 3rd Ser. cxxviii, 745 sqq. * Idem^ cxxix, 784.
^ Lee- Warner, op. cit. 11, 219. ^ Private Letters of Dalhousie^ p. 260.
2-2
CHAPTER II
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
I 818-1858
An 1 81 8 the governor-general was also ex officio governor of Bengal.
His title was governor-general of the presidency of Fort William in
Bengal. In 1833 he became "Governor-General of India".
In 1 81 8 the presidency of Fort William in Bengal included Bengal,
Bihar, Orissa, Benares and "the ceded and the conquered provinces"
which, including Benares, were styled in 1834 the province of Agra
and in 1836 the North-Western Provinces. Between 181 8 and 1858
the presidency received the following accretions :
{a) the Sagar and Narbada territories, first placed under an
agent to the governor-general and then added to the North-Western
Provinces ;
{b) Assam, Arakan and Tenasserim, ceded in 1826 by the king of
Burma after the Treaty of Yandabo;
[c) pieces of Dutch territory at Fulta, Chinsura, Calcapur and
Dacca, ceded in 1824 under a treaty signed in London between Great
Britain and the Netherlands;
{d) the town of Serampur, sold to the East India Company by the
king of Denmark in 1845;
{e) an enclave in Sikkim, which was presented to the East India
Company by the raja of Sikkim in 1835 and became the site of
Darjeeling;
(/) a belt of land between the north boundary of Bengal and
Darjeeling, ceded after the Sikkim expedition of 1850.
In 1836, however, the North-Western Provinces, while remaining
part of the Bengal Presidency and styled the Upper Provinces of
Bengal, ceased to be administered from Calcutta and were placed
under a lieutenant-governor, without a council, who was given the
powers of a governor with certain reservations. And in 1854 Bengal,
Bihar, Orissa and Assam, styled the Lower Provinces of Bengal, were
entrusted to the charge of a lieutenant-governor without a council.
Tenasserim remained directly under the governor-general in council,
and Arakan was at first made over to the lieutenant-governor
of Bengal but was soon retransferred to the Supreme Govern-
ment. At the close of our period the lieutenant-governor of "the
Lower Provinces" of the Bengal Presidency held charge of the
following territories:
EARLY NEGLECT 21
Area in
square miles
Bengal 85,000^
Bihar 42,000
Orissa 7,000
Orissa (tributary mahals) 15,500
Ghota Nagpur and tributary states
on south-west frontier 62,000
Assam 27,500
It is difficult to realise that these wide territories were long ad-
ministered by over-burdened governors-general in council who
further held charge of the opium manufacture, whether carried on in
Bengal or in the North-Western Provinces ; of the Bengal salt manu-
facture ; of the marine and pilot establishments ; of educational and
other institutions in Calcutta with its large European population.
Eastern Bengal moreover, for reasons which will be apparent later
on, has always presented peculiarly difficult problems to governments,
whether Moghul or British. Altogether we can understand that the
necessity of placing the Bengal Lower Provinces under a local govern-
ment was realised long before it was officially recognised. But for
many years governors-general were so fully occupied with expanding
or consolidating empire, with financial and other anxieties, with
prolonged and sometimes irritating dispatches from the directors and
the Board of Control, that they found little time for careful attention
to the needs of provinces inhabited by a population traditionally
unwarlike and apathetic. That Bengal was under-administered, that
its conditions demanded continuous and thoughtful care, if abuses
were not to grow and multiply, was doubtless true. But what
of this, when the responsible government was preoccupied with
French intrigue in the peninsula, or a Maratha war, or trouble with
Sikhs and Afghans; when the directors were insisting on strict eco-
nomy, or parliament was interested in some spectacular phase of
Indian affairs? Now and then, indeed, as we shall see, a governor-
general would suddenly awake to the existence of unsatisfactory
conditions in the capital province and would resolve on drastic
reform. But soon his attention was perforce directed elsewhere, and
in any case his span of office was brief. His successor arrived pre-
occupied with large general interests. And so Bengal remained
generally neglected until her crying needs compelled particular
remedies. In 1826 Sir John Malcolm had urged the advisability of
separating the duties of the governor-general altogether irom those
of "the local government of Bengal", and so "withdrawing his high
name from those minor acts which must always agitate a community
composed like that of Calcutta". Seven years later, by the Govern-
1 Figures taken from Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Administration Report (1855-6).
22 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
ment of India Act of 1833, the governor-general was empowered to
appoint a member of his council to be deputy-governor of Bengal
when absent from Calcutta himself, and to invest the deputy with the
whole or part of a governor's powers. As British India expanded and
governors-general were necessarily often absent from Bengal, the
capital province passed more and more into the charge of deputy-
governors selected, as a rule, only because they happened to be senior
members of council. Writing in 1852 George Campbell observed that
the existing deputy-governor of Bengal had served with credit in the
army for fifty-two years, but had never enjoyed experience of civil
affairs. He was the latest of nine successive governors (i.e. governors-
general or deputies) who had administered the province for the past
twelve years. ^ "It is no wonder", Campbell added, "that such a
government is inefficient, that nothing has generally been done
beyond mere routine, and that Bengal has suffered in consequence. "^
What was apparent to Campbell was equally apparent to Lord
Dalhousie.
"Parliament", said that indefatigable proconsul, "has lately supplied a remedy
for that great deficiency^ which pervaded the entire system and was felt in every
department of the administration. I mean the want of a lieutenant-governor who
should be able to devote the whole of his time and capacity to the Lower Provinces
alone."3
On Dalhousie's recommendation, when the Company's charter was
renewed in 1853, Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Assam became the charge
of a lieutenant-governor. On 28 April, 1854, F. J. Halliday took over
the new office.
By far the greater part of the province of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa
was governed on a system laid down by elaborate regulations which
since the days of Hastings and Cornwallis had gradually been evolved
at Calcutta. But much territory had been added to the British
dominions in Northern India since those early days ; and it was plainly
impossible to govern all the new peoples in accordance with the letter
of the law in the older provinces. Within those provinces, too, were
primitive races, distinct from the ordinary population, who, without
protection, fell easy victims to grasping money-lenders, tyrannical
police, rapacious landlords and pleaders. For simple peoples, as
simple a system of administration as possible must be devised which
would bring them closely into touch with British officers, and would
conform with the spirit but not with the letter of the Bengal regula-
tions. Arrangements were made accordingly whereby the peoples of
newly annexed territories or of tracts inhabited by aboriginal tribes
were governed under a "non-regulation" system. Sometimes, too,
* Lord Curzon, however, says: "Eight such appointments with the title of President of
the Council of India and Deputy Governor of Fort William and the Town of Calcutta
were made between the years 1837 and 1855". (British Government in India, 11, 74.)
* Modern India and its Government, p. 228.
* Minute dated 24 April, 1854.
THE DISTRICTS 23
it was found necessary to withdraw particular districts in the older
provinces from the operation of the general regulations and to govern
them on less elaborate principles. In Bengal, for instance, on the
north-eastern frontier of Rangpur this plan was necessarily followed.^
Assam, Arakan and Tenasserim were made non-regulation territories ;
and so were the south-west frontier tracts of Orissa and the tributary
mahals. So were later the Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling districts and the
hill tracts of Ghittagong. The British executive in non-regulation
territories was composed of military as well as of civil officers. But
our main concern is with the more complex regulation system, which
prevailed over the greater part of the Lower Provinces of the Bengal
Presidency.
Cornwallis had left Bengal proper, which then included some areas
now in the province of Bihar and Orissa, divided into sixteen very
large districts. These districts were gradually brought under sys-
tematic management. At first they were suffering badly from the
effects of years of chaotic administration combined with the devasta-
tion wrought by the famine of 1769-70. From a modern point of
view, they had so far hardly been administered at all. For long
centuries there had been vague confusion varied by the consolidation
of some central power strong enough to enforce payment of revenue
and raise military levies when required. In later years there had been
Maratha raids, wars, Olive's dual system of governing, later experi-
ments, and the appalling ravages of a severe famine unmitigated by
remedial measures. The consequences of so dismal a past were
grievous; and systematic administration could only make way by
degrees. When it began, tracts of culturable land were overgrown
with jungle and infested with wild beasts. Banditti were swarming,
and freebooters from over the border made frequent incursions into
Bengal and Bihar. As years rolled on, it became plain that districts,
territorial units of administration, must be increased. Commerce,
business, reference of quarrels to the law courts, grew rapidly; culti-
vation extended far and wide ; the ownership of land passed largely
from the hands of the big zamindars into those of new families and
proprietary communities; it became necessary to subdivide all dis-
tricts into police-circles and not into large estates of individual
zamindars. Here and there non-regulation charges were created
because a simpler form of government was required for aboriginal
tribes. Two districts, Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri, were formed from
new territory. Elsewhere grave defects in existing boundaries, re-
vealed by survey operations, necessitated transfers of villages from
one district to another. Arrangements were made whereby in every
district civil and criminal and revenue jurisdictions might become
coterminous.
Examining the history of the Lower Provinces from Cornwallis*s
1 Bengal Administration Report (1911-12), Historical Review, p. 98.
24 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
days to these, we find the number of districts increasing before,
during, and after our period.^ Bengal alone now contains twenty-
eight districts.
In 1818 the magisterial and police control of a district in the Lower
Provinces vested in a judge-magistrate^ or in one of those district
magistrates whose appointment had been sanctioned by a permissive
regulation passed in 1810. Police administration in all districts was
supervised by four superintendents of police posted since 1808-10 at
Calcutta, Dacca, Patna and Murshidabad. The collectors of districts
presided over fiscal arrangements only, under the supervision of the
Board of Revenue at Calcutta. In 1829 the government of Lord
William Bentinck decided to appoint "commissioners of revenue and
circuit". Each commissioner was placed in charge of a division
embracing several districts. In subordination to the Board of
Revenue, he supervised the work of his collectors ; and in subordina-
tion to the government he superintended the administration of the
judge-magistrates and district magistrates. He possessed wide execu-
tive discretion, was also sessions judge and held assizes in each district
of his division. The duties of the judges of the provincial courts of
appeal and of the four superintendents of police were made over to
him; and these officials were abolished. In 1831 further changes were
ordained. Sessions work was transferred from the commissioners to
the district civil judges, who made over their magisterial duties to the
collectors. For a brief period the magistrate and collector reappeared
in Bengal. But in 1837 it was decided once more to divide his func-
tions; and separate district magistrates were revived. Almost every
district had its civil and sessions judge, its collector and its magistrate;
but one judge sometimes presided over the civil and criminal judicial
work of two districts. The rank of the judge was superior to that of
the collector and the rank of collector was superior to that of the
district magistrate. In 1845 officers holding simultaneously the posts
of collector and magistrate survived in three Orissa districts only.
The leading officers of a district were supported by assistants
belonging to the covenanted civil service, and by deputy-collectors
and deputy-magistrates, principally natives of the country but often
Europeans or Eurasians, belonging to the uncovenanted services
recruited by the Government of India. At every district headquarters
there were a magistrate's office and a collector's office, which included
a treasury, both with ministerial establishments. There were the
courts of assistant and deputy-magistrates and collectors and the
court of the judge. If instalments of land revenue were not paid into
the treasury by appointed dates, estates of defaulters were sold at the
collector's office under "the sunset law".
^ Rai Manohan Chakrabatti Bahadur, Summary of the changes in the jurisdiction of districts
in Bengal (1757- 191 6).
* Mill and Wilson, History of India, vii, 285.
DISTRICT OFFICIALS 25
The post of deputy-collector was legally established by Regulation ix
of 1833,^ and that of deputy-magistrate, with or without police
powers, by a regulation of 1 843. ^ To these posts persons of any religion,
colour, descent or place of birth might be appointed. Desiring to give
collectors and magistrates special assistance from senior subordinates
who would be entrusted with powers wider than those which could
be conceded to ordinary assistants, covenanted or uncovenanted, the
government of Lord William Bentinck created a rank of "joint
magistrate " to which senior covenanted assistants might be appointed.
Later on, with the double object of increasing magisterial control
over the police and of bringing justice nearer to the doors of the
people, joint magistrates were posted to the charge of subdivisions of
districts with the title of " subdivisional officer". These officers
resided in their subdivisions. Afterwards assistant and deputy-magis-
trates also were posted to subdivisions which were originally created
in a somewhat haphazard fashion. Located with regard to the posi-
tion of important villages or markets, or in the centre of some out-
lying part of an extensive district, or in a tract where some big
zamindar was playing the tyrant, they developed piecemeal under
pressure of varying circumstances. Even in 1856 there were in the
whole province only thirty- three subdivisional magistracies.^
We have seen that in 1845 only three magistrates-and-collectors
remained. But the union of magisterial and fiscal functions also
survived in eight "independent" joint magistrates who presided over
eight minor districts, offshoots from older districts, and subdivisions
still in regard to revenue business, but separate charges in other
respects. Taxes were paid in at the parent headquarters treasury; but
the "independent joint magistrate", although merely a sub-collector,
possessed all the powers of a district magistrate. These arrangements
were designed to secure more vigilant and effective magisterial super-
vision for remote tracts where crime was rampant.* Seven of these
semi-districts were converted into ordinary district charges in 1861.
From 1837 to 1854 the experiment was tried of transferring the
supervision of the police from the commissioners to a provincial
superintendent whose headquarters were at Calcutta. Assam, how-
ever, and the non-regulation portion of Orissa were excluded from
his jurisdiction. In 1850 Chittagong was also excluded; and in 1854
the office of superintendent was abolished, and the duties were re-
transferred to the commissioners.
Thus at the close of our period we have district administration in
Bengal superintended by commissioners and conducted generally by
collectors and district magistrates assisted by joint magistrates,
deputy-magistrates and deputy-collectors. The judicial decisions of
^ Historical Summary, Bengal Administration Report (1911-12), pp. 45-6.
2 Idem.
^ Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant-Governors, i, 26, 219.
* Historical Summary, Bengal Administration Report (1911-12), p. 47.
26 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
all magistrates were, except in petty cases, appealable to the district
judges, who combined the functions of sessions judge with those of a
civil judge. As civil judges they heard appeals from the decisions of
subordinate Indian judges. Anxious to give the natives of India a
more honourable share in the administration. Lord William Bentinck
had very largely increased the jurisdiction of Indian judicial officers
appointed to try civil suits. He created a new rank of "principal sadr
amin^' with power to try original suits up to a value of Rs. 5000, and
decided that in respect of suits for property above a certain value
appeals from tlie decisions of the principal sadr amins should lie not
to the civil and sessions judge but to the sadr court, the chief (Com-
pany's) tribunal of the province. The lowest grade of judicial officer
in civil cases was that of the munsiff, who had succeeded the "native
commissioner" of Cornwallis's days. His decisions were appealable
to the district judge.
The districts, averaging toward the end of our period about 3000
square miles in area, were each divided into from fifteen to twenty
thanas (police-circles). At each tkana headquarters was an officer
styled daroga, supported by a clerk, a sergeant and from twenty to
fifty armed men, all badly paid. In any considerable outlying town
was a small resident force of police under a petty officer. In all villages
were chaukidars (watchmen) supposed to keep guard at night, to notice
the movements of bad characters, to apprehend felons caught
flagrante delicto, and to report all important matters at the thana
headquarters. Chaukidars generally were appointed by tlie zamindars
of their villages, and any appointment might be vetoed by the district
magistrate. But Regulation xiii of 1 8 1 3, which was the first municipal
enactment in Bengal, provided for the appointment in large towns of
chaukidars who were to be paid by the residents, the preamble laying
down the principle that the people for whose benefit and protection
such an establishment might be entertained should defray the charge
of their maintenance.^ Ordinary village chaukidars were remunerated
by the state for watch-and-ward, but in many respects were the
private servants of the zamindars from whom they held chakran
(service) lands upon which the government possessed a limited lien.
This arrangement worked badly. The chaukidars were useless and
corrupt, the supple tools of the zamindars. Although by regulations
passed in 1808 and 1812^ the latter were liable to heavy penalties and
even to forfeiture of their lands if they failed to give early information
of the commission of offences or afforded countenance to robbers,
they had only to establish friendly relations with the police darogas to
reign as they pleased over weaker neighbours and reap ample profits
from the villainies of banditti. The British officers, who sdone could
prevent such malpractices, were scanty in number, hampered by a
^ Bengal District Administration Committee Report (191 3-1 4), p. 97.
« Mill and Wilson, op. cit. vii, 288.
POLICE REFORMS ay
faulty and unstable administrative system and served by corrupt and
ill-trained subordinates. Moving about was often difficult and
generally slow. Lawlessness and violence were frequent and easy.^
In 1855 the first lieutenant-governor. Sir Frederick Halliday, sub-
mitted to the Supreme Government specific proposals for improve-
ment in the pay of the regular district police, admitting that " the
outlay though considerable could not be regarded as final, as the
police establishment was numerically weaker than it should be for the
protection of property and the preservation of good order". In 1856
he further pressed the question, urging the importance of raising the
tone of the whole administration of criminal justice in Bengal. The
police were bad and the tribunals were inefficient. These two circum-
stances acted and reacted upon each other. The thirty-three sub-
divisional magistrates were too few to exercise adequate control. The
village chaukidars were extremely corrupt.
"Whether right or wrong", he wrote, "the general native opinion is that the
administration of criminal justice is little below that of a lottery, in which, however,
the best chances are with the criminals ; the corruption and extortion of the police
cause it to be popularly said that dacoity is bad enough, but the subsequent enquiry
very much worse."
Halliday recommended five indispensable measures : [a) the improve-
ment of the character and position of the village chaukidars', (b) ade-
quate salaries and fair prospects of advancement for the regular
stipendiary police; {c) the appointment of more experienced officers
as district magistrates who should be of a standing not inferior to that
of the collectors ; [d) the appointment of one hundred more deputy-
magistrates, and the investment of all magistrates with judicial and
executive powers; {e) improvement in the criminal courts of justice.
He dwelt on the necessity of good roads and of a popular system of
vernacular education. In communicating with the court of directors
on the whole subject the Government of India recommended a
movable corps of military police for each division in the Lower
Provinces. After the Santal insurrection, which will be noticed
later, the lieutenant-governor, in reply to a reference from the
Supreme Government, advised the formation of a body of well-
organised and officered military police for the internal defence of
Bengal. The corps was raised and was afterwards expanded during
the Mutiny, drawing recruits largely from the hardier races of Upper
India. The proposals of the lieutenant-governor did not bear general
fruit until after 1858; but in 1856 he succeeded in procuring the
passing of a Chaukidari (or village police) Act which provided for the
watch-and-ward of those larger towns and villages to which it was
applied. In them chaukidars were appointed by the district magistrates
on such salaries as they thought fit. The cost was recovered from the
1 Buckland, op. cit. p. 23.
28 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
inhabitants, in proportions assessed by panchayats, committees of five
leading men. Any surplus available from tax-funds was spent on
sanitary and other improvements.
Halliday desired the union of judicial and executive power in all
magistrates. He considered, too, that each district should have one
head only. The office of magistrate-and-collector should be revived.
The case for this reform had been trenchantly stated by Dalhousie.
When in 1854, enumerating the defects which called for removal
in Bengal, that great governor-general gave the first place to "the
separation of the offices of collector and magistrate contrary to the
system which had long prevailed in the lieutenant-governorship of
the North-Western Provinces".^
These views were warmly advocated by Halliday; and Dalhousie's
successor, Canning, recorded, in a minute dated 18 February, 1857,
that as regarded the people, the patriarchal form of government was
most congenial to them and best understood by them ; and as regarded
the governing power,
the concentration of all responsibility upon one officer cannot fail to keep his
attention alive, and to stimulate his energy in every department to the utmost
whilst it will preclude the growth of those obstructions to good government which
are apt to spring up where two co-ordinate officers divide the authority.^
This decision was endorsed by Lord Stanley, secretary of state for
India, in a dispatch dated 14 April, 1859. The change was rapidly
carried out, and at the same time seven of the eight "independent"
joint magistracies were converted into districts.
The reform was one of great importance. The magistrate-and-
collector, or district officer of our period in Bombay, Madras and the
North-Western Provinces, was practically a local governor, exercising
a wide-ranging superintendence over his district and regarded by its
people as their helper and ruler. In discharging his responsibilities he
derived great advantage from the combination of his powers. During
the hot season he remained at his headquarters unless called to some
outlying place by an emergency. But at the beginning of the cold
weather he "went into camp", i.e. toured over his district with tents
and a small office establishment. Halting here and there, he visited
and inspected police-stations, superintended police arrangements
generally, visited schools, examined all matters connected with the
expenditure of local funds and the welfare of the people. As collector
he presided over a large revenue and land-records establishment
distributed throughout his district, and devoted careful attention to
the doings of officials responsible for the collection of revenue and the
proper maintenance of village accounts and registers. In the North-
* Dalhousie's minute is quoted in full in Chakrabatti's Summary of the changes in the
jurisdiction of districts in Bengal.
* Buckland, op. cit. pp. 24-5.
THE MAGISTRATE AND COLLECTOR 29
Western Provinces his district was divided into tahsils (revenue sub-
divisions which were distinct from police-circles), each with a head-
quarters office and treasury, presided over by a tahsildar or sub-collector
of revenue who was invested with petty magisterial powers and in
education and status was decidedly superior to the average thanadar
(police-station officer) . The revenue was paid into the tahsil treasuries ;
and through the tahsildars the district officer was kept in constant
touch with rural affairs. Subordinate to the tahsildars were kanungos,
travelling inspectors of the registers kept up by patwaris (village
accountants) . The energy and practical ability which were necessary
qualities for a good district officer were essential also for a good
tahsildar.
"The magistrate", says Campbell, "m.ay be considered the delegate of the ruling
powers of the government, the collector its agent in everything that concerns its
own interests and the interests of those connected with it in the land ; but the two
duties are intimately connected, and the functions materially assist and affect one
another."
A magistrate-and-collector was kept in check by a liberal, widely
understood, and freely exercised power of appeal from his decisions.
He was in all executive and revenue matters subordinate to his com-
missioner and was liable to see his judicial decisions in criminal cases
upset by the sessions judge. Yet in fact he possessed great influence and
powers of initiative, and to the people he represented the one em-
bodied authority whom they could easily and frequently approach.
In most Bengal districts, however, during the twenty years which
preceded the Mutiny there was no such representative of the govern-
ment possessed, by virtue of his office, of pre-eminent power and
responsibility. It was the duty, the inspiring duty, of no one servant
of the Company to watch over and promote the general welfare, from
every point of view, of the people committed to his charge. And as
one legacy of the Permanent Settlement was the payment of all
revenue into the district headquarters treasury, and another was a
complete absence of any attempt to register either the tenures and
the holdings of cultivators or any changes in the ownership of land,
no Bengal collector enjoyed the assistance of tahsildars^ or of any
subordinate revenue staff. All orders from headquarters to outlying
parts of the district travelled through the corrupt and oppressive
police. These administrative shortcomings, and the long years which
elapsed before Bengal became the sole charge of a whole-time
governor, combined with other consequences of the Permanent
Settlement and a wide lack of communications to bear hardly on
rural populations.
The government of Gornwallis had recognised its duty "to protect
all classes of people and more particularly those who from their
^ Tahsildars were abolished in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in 1802.
30 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
situation are most helpless".^ It had reserved power to enact such
regulations as might be thought "necessary for the protection and
welfare of the dependent ' talukdars ' (sub-proprietors), ryots (tenants)
and other cultivators of the soil". It had ordered that zamindars
should give their tenants written leases and that village accountants
should keep the accounts of the ryots in registers. But these orders
were never carried out. Subsequent governments contented them-
selves with facilitating collection of land revenue by enabling
zamindars to employ, instead of civil suits for the recovery of arrears
of rent, such summary processes as arrest, imprisonment or distraint
of property. These concessions to the landlords were unaccompanied
by any attempt on the part of the government to secure the rights of
the tenants by registering their holdings, rents or customary privileges.
At first, indeed, tenants were protected by the existence of a large
culturable and uncultivated area. They were in demand. But as the
country settled and population increased, competition for holdings
intensified, and opportunities for rack-renting arose. Summary eject-
ments became frequent. If the victims appealed to the collectors they
were referred to the civil courts, where they were unable to produce
written leases in support of their assertions and could not refer the
presiding officers to any government record of their rights and holdings.
Being in every suit the weaker and the poorer party, they obtained
little or no assistance firom the vakils (pleaders), who were ready to
appear for the zamindars. From the latter they received little or no
generosity. Many of the big landlords had given place to new men or
to proprietary communities, or had leased or mortgaged their villages
to money-lending families. Expanding cultivation, rising rents, the
fixed and unalterable government demand, the powerlessness of
tenants in the civil courts, and the tendency of estates to split into
numbers of shares, enhanced the market-value of landed property.
Zamindars, lessees, sub-lessees, mortgagees, sub-mortgagees increased
and multiplied. In village after village layers of middlemen inter-
posed between the cultivators and the zamindars, who were re-
sponsible to the government for payment of revenue. All these
interlopers, and the persons from whom they derived their titles,
endeavoured to screw as much profit as possible from the tenants,
who were squeezed, rack-rented, and driven more and more to the
money-lenders. The scramble among those over him for profits from
his labours tended to drive the Bengal cultivator nearer and nearer
to the wall. But he was sustained by long practice in self-protection;
he was favoured by the copious rainfall, the fertilising rivers and the
rich soil of his province. Thus it was that in 1852 an observer noted:
What strikes me most in any village or set of villages in a Bengal district, is the
exuberant fertility of the soil, the sluttish plenty surrounding the cultivator's abode,
the fruit and timber trees, and the palpable evidence against anything like famine.
* Regulation i of 1793.
POSITION OF THE RYOT 31
Did any man ever go through a Bengali village and find himself assailed by the cry
of want or famine? Was he ever told that the ryot and his family did not know
where to turn for a meal; that they had no shade to shelter them, no tank to bathe
in, no employment for their active limbs? That villages are not neatly laid out
like a model village in an English county, that things seem to go on, year by year,
in the same slovenly fashion, that there are no local improvements, and no advances
in cultivation, is all very true. But considering the wretched condition of some of
the Irish peasantry, or even the Scotch, and the misery experienced by hundreds
in the purlieus of our great cities at home, compared with the condition of the
ryots, who know neither cold nor hunger, it is high time that the outcry about the
extreme unhappiness of the Bengal ryot should cease. ^
There is often, however, in Indian villages much which does not
catch the eye of a superficial observer but nevertheless gravely affects
the happiness of the cultivators. It is not good for simple and illiterate
peasants to be driven to distant law courts to plead for ordinary
consideration, and when they have arrived at their destination, to
find themselves at a serious disadvantage through the absence of
registers which should record their status, their rents, the particulars
of their holdings. It is not good for them to be placed at the mercy of
rapacious landlords, pleaders and court underlings. It is not good
for them to be expelled from their ancestral fields for no fault what-
ever, to see their rights ignored because a paternal government has
not troubled itself to ascertain and record those rights. As long
ago as 1822 Lord Hastings, in the midst of a thousand cares, found
time to ponder over these things. On i August, 1822, his government
proposed to the court of directors that a survey should be undertaken
and a record of rights prepared in the permanently settled districts
of Bengal "as being the only real means of defining and maintaining
the rights of the ryot". But for the next thirty-seven years all that
was ever done was to refer aggrieved tenants to the civil courts,
where their chances of success or fair play were obviously indifferent.
Surveys of districts indeed began in 1834-5, but these were not
cadastral, from field to field, as were surveys in the neighbouring
North- Western Provinces. In the Lower Provinces village boundaries
were demarcated, and useful statistics were prepared; but nothing
was done to secure the position of the cultivators. In short, the revenue
system bequeathed to Bengal by Cornwallis did not conduce to the
happiness or content of the people, and its defects and omissions
tended to obstruct free and beneficial intercourse between district
officers and the rural population of the province.
Roads were a matter of peculiar difficulty even in western Bengal,
where in seasons of heavy rainfall and high floods wide tracts became
sheets of water. But eastern Bengal was at all times largely a water
country. Its features were thus described by the District Adminis-
tration Committee of 191 3-14:
Those members who have previously been unacquainted with Eastern Bengal
are convinced that no one who has not travelled over its rural areas is likely to grasp
^ Kaye's Administration of the East India Company , p. 194.
32 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
its difficulties. Communications are more scanty and more inefficient than in any
part of India known to us. Traversed by mighty rivers, and tributary streams,
visited by abundant rains, these eastern districts are mainly a water-country which
yields rich harvests of rice and jute to a teeming population, partly concentrated
in a few towns, but mainly scattered over a number of villages. The villages, often
close to marshes or winding along the banks of some tortuous stream, generally
consist of scattered homesteads, built on whatever rising ground may be available.
Often the houses are hidden in thickets of bamboos, fruit-trees and undergrowth.
In the rains vast tracts of the country are completely submerged ; the houses, each
on its own section of naturally or artificially raised land, stand up like islands in
the flood; and only a few of the more important roads are out of water. Boats are
the ordinary means of transit, and markets spring up on the banks of waterways.
Even in the drier weather the country is intersected by streams and creeks. It is
easy for wary dacoits to choose their time and prey, to effect their purpose and to
disappear, leaving no tracks behind.^
It was long held to be doubtful whether the terms of the Permanent
Settlement precluded the imposition of cesses or rates on the zamin-
dars in order to provide means of extending elementary education
and of making and maintaining roads. The zamindars themselves
stoutly maintained that the levy of any such impost would be unjust
and contrary to the pledges given them by the government of
Cornwallis. This plea was long debated and not rejected till 1870.
For years, too, the governor-general in council, hard pressed by
war expenditure, failed to appreciate the importance of good roads
in Bengal. Some idea of the backward state of communications may
be formed from the facts that even in 1855-6 four streams on the
Grand Trunk Road (from Calcutta to North-Western India) re-
mained to be bridged, and that only then was a project for bridging
the Hughli at or near Calcutta considered. 2 Sir John Strachey
describes conditions existent in Bengal about 1 854.
There were almost no roads, or bridges or schools, and there was no proper
protection to life or property. The police was worthless, and robberies and violent
crimes by gangs of armed men, which were unheard of in other provinces, were
common not far from Calcutta.^
But a better era was dawning. Dalhousie fully appreciated the
need of improved communications. He transferred the charge of
public works from inefficient military boards to provincial govern-
ment departments. His engineers metalled a longer mileage of roads
than had been constructed by the four preceding governors-general. *
Before he resigned office a system of trunk lines had been sketched,
and the first section of the East India Railway had been opened; the
modern postal system had been inaugurated; a telegraph line ran
from Calcutta to Agra. Modem India had begun to take shape.
Before observing the violent storm which attended its birth, we must
notice certain kinds of epidemic crime which, encouraged by adminis-
* Bengal District Administration Committee Report (191 3-1 4), p. 12.
' Buckland, op. cit. p. 29.
* Strachey, India, p. 420.
* Hunter, "India of the Qjieen". Gf. Imperial Gmctteer, m, 366.
TRAGI 33
trative deficiencies and lack of communications, long afflicted the
districts of Bengal.
In 1853 Kaye remarked of the India of his day:
hundreds of its natives disappear; and their disappearance is either hardly noted,
or it creates no astonishment or alarm. A journey in India is a matter of many
months; and numerous are the perils which beset the path of the unprotected
pedestrian. Hence it was that whole hecatombs were sacrificed to the goddess
Devi, and no one took account of the victims.
He refers to the monstrous crimes of the thags (literally "cheats")
who for years infested every part of India except the Konkan in the
Bombay Presidency. They were a fraternity of murderers who bore
a name earned apparently by their disguises and crafty methods of
procedure. Before starting on expeditions to rob and murder, they
invoked the aid of the Hindu goddess of strength and destruction,
Kali alias Devi alias Bhawani, consecrating to her the weapons of
their trade, the strips of cloth used in strangling their victims and the
pickaxes with which the graves of these poor people were dug.
"A thag", wrote Captain Sleeman, "considers the persons murdered
precisely in the light of victims offered up to the goddess."
It was some time before the Supreme Government awoke to the
fact that within their own home territory organised bands of pro-
fessional and hereditary robbers and murderers, recognised and
indeed to a certain extent tolerated by their fellow-men, were com-
mitting the most horrible crimes "with as much forethought and
ingenuity as though murder was one of the fine arts, and robbery
a becoming effort of human skill, nay even were glorying in such
achievements as acts welcome to the deity". But when at last the
position was understood, a thagi police department was organised
under Captain, afterwards Sir William, Sleeman, one of the Com-
pany's ablest servants. In the older provinces, however, to catch a
thag was far easier than to procure his conviction, for thags "throve
upon the legal niceties and the judicial reserve of the English tribunals
and laughed our regulations to scorn ".^ So in 1836 a special act was
passed by which any person convicted of belonging or having belonged
to a gang of thags became liable to imprisonment for life. Thus all
that was necessary to secure conviction was to prove association of
an individual with these pests of society. Encouraging approvers,
Sleeman and his officers by indefatigable and comprehensive opera-
tions gradually put an end to thagi, rooting out what he justly calls
"an enormous evil which had for centuries oppressed the people and
from which it was long supposed that no human efforts could relieve
them ".2 By 1852 the guild had been scattered, never again to re-
assemble; but Bengal had been infested by river thags as well as by
^ Kaye, op. cit. pp. 354-79; O'Malley, Bengal^ Bihar and Orissoy pp. 346-50.
^ Quoted, Calcutta Review (i860), xxxv, 372.
3
34 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
road thags, and even in 1854 as many as 250 boats manned by these
miscreants were infesting the Ganges between Calcutta and Benares.
The struggle against dakaiti or dacoity (brigandage) lasted even
longer than that against thagi, and had not attained complete success
at the close of our period. Warren Hastings had applied "an extra-
ordinary and exemplary coercion"/ not only against dacoity but also
against those whom he stigmatised as its "nursing-mothers", the
zamindars and the police. The snake, however, was only scotched.
In 1810 Lord Minto observed that "a monstrous and disorganised
state of society existed at the very seat of that government to which
the country might justly look for safety and protection". Bengal was
far more subject to brigandage than more recent acquisitions and less
civilised tracts. This anomaly was due to the riches of the country,
its long security from invasion, its venal police and unscrupulous
zamindars, who frequently regarded their estates "as fields to plunder
in, extort and pillage". The dacoits had secured their posidon by
systematic intimidation. 2
"It is impossible", wrote Minto, "to imagine without seeing it the horrid
ascendancy which they have obtained over the inhabitants at large of the countries
which have been the principal scene of their atrocities. ... In truth the captains of
the band are esteemed and even called the hakim or ruling power, while the govern-
ment does not possess either authority or influence enough to obtain from the
people the smallest aid toward their own protection."
Minto initiated a vigorous campaign against dacoity; but in 1823
the pest was so rife in the Purnea district that leases of estates were
sought for in the expectation that profits would be swelled by shares
from illicit plunder. Afterwards, with the aid of the recently organised
thagi police-force, some gangs of dacoits were broken up ; but cap-
tures seldom ended in conviction as victims feared to testify against
their oppressors; so in 1843 an act was passed similar to that pre-
viously directed against thagi. To secure conviction it sufficed merely
to prove association with a gang of dacoits either within or outside
the Company's territories before or after the passing of the new
measure. Doubt, however, arose as to the applicability of this enact-
ment to dacoits who did not belong to certain tribes therein specified.
In 1 85 1 this doubt was removed by further legislation. Kaye tells us
that even then by terrorism, by producing numerous false witnesses,
and by availing themselves of the barriers which the complicated
machinery of the law placed between "the eyes of the British func-
tionary and the crimes which were committed around him", the
dacoits were still glorying in their exploits "as sportsmen do".
In 1852 Wauchope, the magistrate of Hughli, forwarded to the
superintendent of police a list 0^287 dacoits belonging to three gangs
which were concerned in eighty- three dacoities, adding that at least
^ Bengal Revenue Consultations, 19 April, 1774.
* O'Malley, op. cit. pp. 305-6; also Mill and Wilson, vii, 284.
THE SANTALS 35
thirty-five gangs were then committing depredations near Calcutta.
He was himself appointed special Dacoity Commissioner and, assisted
by the new enactments, rapidly improved the situation. But the
central difficulty of the situation was the fact that the sufferers were
too apathetic to defend themselves individually, and even in 1 859 the
Dacoity Commissioner was still indispensable.
Among the best achievements of the Company's servants in parts
of the Lower Provinces were the conversion of restless and savage
tribes of aboriginals into generally law-abiding cultivators. The
pacification of the Santals, of the Chuars or Bhumij of Manbhum, of
the Larka Kols of Chota Nagpur, of the Khonds of the Orissa hills
was effected not only by the exercise of superior force which alone
could subdue rapine and bloody ferocity, but by methods of concilia-
tion and kindness practised by certain British officers whose names
still blossom in the dust.
From time to time religious and agrarian agitation produced
relapses into barbarism. Such a relapse was the Santal rebellion of
1855, which arose from the resentment of a tribe of primitive culti-
vators at their impotence to resist the exactions of Bengali and Bihari
landlords. About 30,000 Santals overran a large expanse of country,
roasting Bengalis, ripping up their women and torturing their
children. The rising was quelled by a strong military force and after-
wards the Santal Parganas were constituted a separate district and
ruled on a simpler system designed to secure closer personal contact
between British officers and the people.
District administration in Bengal weathered the trials of the Mutiny
right gallantly. When the storm broke there were in Bengal, Bihar
and Orissa only 2400 European soldiers as against Indian forces of
more than 29,000. In Calcutta there was a single British regiment.
No other British troops were nearer than Dinapur, 380 miles away,
where a regiment was employed in watching four Indian regiments
and the great city of Patna.^ In June, 1857, Lord Canning found it
necessary to pass a stringent Press Act, operative for one year, which
was required rather for Calcutta and Bengal than for Upper India.
"I doubt", he said, "whether it is fully known or understood to what an auda-
cious extent sedition has been poured into the hearts of the native population of
India within the last few weeks under the guise of intelligence supplied to them by
the native newspapers. ... It has been done sedulously, cleverly, artfully. ... In
addition to perversion of facts there are constant vilifications of the Government,
false assertions of its purposes, and unceasing attempts to sow discontent and
hatred between it and its subjects."^
Yet despite all adverse circumstances, despite a general lack of
communications, despite defects of administrative organisation already
noticed, although hardly a single district escaped either actual danger
or the apprehension thereof, so little was the public peace disturbed
^ Buckland, op. cit. p. 6. ^ Donogh, History and Law ofSeditwrij p. 183.
3-2
36 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
that in submitting his final detailed report on the whole of that
troublous period, the lieutenant-governor was able to state that "the
outbreak, as far as the Lower Provinces are concerned, had been
simply a military mutiny, and there has been at no time anything
that can be called a rebellion in the sense in which that term may
properly be used".^
The people of Bengal are for the most part, as Lord Canning said,
"less warlike and turbulent than those of Upper India". But while
large sections of them are timid, apathetic and peculiarly susceptible
to the domination of unscrupulous terrorism, there were in 1857 many
restless and truculent men who desired nothing more ardently than
the overthrow of the one power which stood between the province
and anarchy. Between all such and the achievement of their designs
stood a small band of British officers and the general confidence of
the people in the power and determination of the British government.
Here, for the present, we must leave our subject, remembering that,
so far, the educational policy adopted in 1835 had hardly touched
Bengal outside Calcutta. Even in 1852 there were in the government
educational institutions of the whole Lower Provinces upwards of
11,000 pupils only, of whom 103 were Christians, 791 were Muham-
madans, 189 were Arakanese, thags, and Bhagalpur Hill aborigines,
while the rest were Hindus. ^ Action on the famous Education
Dispatch of 19 July, 1854, had barely commenced when it was re-
tarded by the outbreak of the Mutiny and consequent financial
difficulties. State education was, later on, to bring in new problems;
but to the gross ignorance which prevailed so widely within our period
are largely to be ascribed not only certain monstrous evils mentioned
in this chapter, but also the general incompetence and dishonesty of
the poHce.^ The field for the selection of capable and trustworthy
government servants was narrow and restricted. This circumstance
naturally affected the efficiency of the law courts which were not
guided by the carefully considered codes of law and procedure of a
later day. The criminal law was then "a patchwork made up of
pieces, engrafted at all times and seasons on a ground nearly covered
and obliterated".*
If we weigh these circumstances with the consequences of adminis-
trative mistakes made far away in the past and postponements of
Bengal interests to more immediately pressing considerations, if we
remember the lack of communications and the physical features of
the eastern districts, we shall rather wonder that things went as well
as they did than cavil because they did not go better.
It may be 2isked why, in view of the onerous nature of the task of
district administration in Bengal, was no serious attempt made to
introduce local self-government? Efforts were made, dictated largely
^ Buckland, op. cit. p. 157. * Kaye, op. cit. p. 614.
' Calcutta Review (1B60), xxxv, 37a. * Campbell, Modem India, p. 465.
LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 37
by sanitary considerations, to establish a municipal system in towns
which were willing to accept one; but Campbell tells us that when
a deputy-governor of Bengal had imposed a municipal constitution
on a certain town, and the district magistrate tried to "carry out its
details", he was "prosecuted" in the Supreme Court at Calcutta by
some of the inhabitants and ordered to pay damages as a majority of
the inhabitants did not desire the innovation. "Strange to say",
remarks Campbell, "the unenlightened Indian public cannot be
brought to understand the pleasure of taxing themselves and resolutely
decline the proffered favour."^ Neither for sanitation, nor for main-
taining an adequate system of watch-and-ward, nor for any similar
purpose, was there any popular inclination to spend money.
^ Campbell, op. cit. p. 261.
CHAPTER III
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
1818-1857
J. HROUGHOUT this period the history of Madras was generally
untroubled. But difficulties arose in the jagir of Kurnool over
which the Company had acquired suzerainty in 1800. A disputed
succession in 1 8 1 5 had led to the temporary occupation of Kurnool
town; another vacancy in 1823 had involved the arrest of the heir for
murder and the installation of Rasul Khan. His freaks might have
passed unnoticed but for his buying cannons and repairing forts. Then,
agitated by rumours of a general Wahabi conspiracy, the govern-
ment, in 1839, sent commissioners with troops to make enquiries. The
nawab took refuge with his Rohilla and Arab soldiers and a conflict
ensued in which the Rohillas suffered severely. Rasul Khan was
taken to Trichinopoly, where he diligently attended services at a
Christian chapel until he was murdered by one of his servants. The
nawab was probably mad, but the affair ended in the annexation of
his state, which was administered as a non-regulation province by
a commissioner or agent till 1858 when it was combined with other
areas to form the present district of Kurnool.
On the west coast Canara became involved in the Coorg War
through Coorg holding part of the lowlands, and was the scene of a
repulse with considerable loss of a small force advancing from the
coast. The war resulted in the restoration to Canara of the patch of
lowland, but some malcontents remained there and found occupation
in 1837 in chasing the collector and his sepoys back to Mangalore
where they did some damage, ill-armed as they were, before they
were dispersed.
Malabar had had an unusual spell of peace before the Moplahs
(who include Malayali converts to Islam as well as the descendants
of Arabs and Malayali women) in 1836 began a series of twenty-two
disturbances within eighteen years. There was desperate fighting in
1849 when all the sixty-four Moplahs "out** were killed and the
outbreak of 1 852 was accompanied by hideous murders in which, for
the first time, the Hindu women and children were not spared.
Strange, of the sadr adalat, deputed to enquire, attributed the dis-
orders to fanaticism and advocated stern repression. His mission was
followed by the murder of ConoUy, the collector, and laws^ were
passed for the better prevention of outrages and to deprive the Mop-
lahs of their war-knives. The effect of these measures was dis-
appointing, as will be seen later.
» India Acts XXIII and XXIV of 1854 and XX of 1859.
THE NORTHERN ZAMINDARS
39
The north had not known peace for generations. It was reported
in 1759 that the forms and even the remembrance of civil government
seemed to have been wholly lost in the Circars. In Ganjam turmoil
had been incessant. Family feud, mutual jealousy, resentment against
civil decrees or revenue demands, hatred of the police — there was
always some reason for a zamindar to be in arms, some occasion for
troops to be contracting fever. Matters came to a head in the
Parlakimedi zamindari where rival ranis had embroiled the hill chiefs
in a feud of nineteen years' duration. In the midst of the trouble the
estate came under the Court of Wards whose manager became
involved in the fray, and other zamindaris were drawn in too. It was
time to settle things once and for all. George Russell, of the board,
was appointed special commissioner with extraordinary powers and
a large body of troops. A special tribunal was set up to try prisoners.
Russell proclaimed martial law. Forts were reduced, the rebels were
defeated everywhere, some were hanged, others transported or con-
fined as state prisoners, estate lands were sequestrated. By 1834 the
trouble seemed over. But, at the beginning of the operations,
Dhananjaya BhanjV raja of Gumsur, "that tyrannous monster", had
been enlarged from captivity by the government, credulous of fair
promises, and restored to his estate, and the opportunity seemed to
him too good to be wasted. He withheld the revenue and defied the
authorities. But the blood of the government was up. Russell was
reappointed and the troops set in motion again. Dhananjaya fled for
refuge to the Khonds in the hills. For the first time in history the
Company's forces entered those fever-stricken tracts. Dhananjaya
died, laying injunction on the Khonds not to allow his women-folk
to be captured. In this they failed, but they overwhelmed the
detachment in charge of Dhananjaya's belongings and killed several
of the women to save them from anticipated dishonour. The troops
spread over the country and returned to finish their work the following
year. The rebellious chiefs were killed, hanged or transported. The
Gumsur and Surada zamindaris were declared forfeit. For the first
time since 1 768 Ganjam had a spell of peace which lasted until the
Savaras in 1853, and again in 1856, descended from the hills to
plunder and burn. They quieted down when their own huts and
crops were burnt in retaliation. In the meantime there had been an
outbreak in the Vizagapatam hills which involved military operations
for three years. These troublesome Northern Circars, which covered
almost the whole of the present five northernmost districts, had been
held subject to an annual payment to the Nizam, until 1823, when the
liability was capitalised and discharged. The condition of the adminis-
tration moved the directors to order in 1 849 that the Circars should be
placed under the direct charge of a member of the board as special
commissioner, and this arrangement continued for five or six years.
^ For his story see the Ganjam District Manual.
40 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
Russell's operations had results still to be mentioned. One of these
was the enactment of India Act XXIV of 1839, which withdrew the
hill tracts of Ganjam and Vizagapatam from the operation of the
ordinary courts and laws, and placed them under the sole control of
the collectors of those districts, styled agents to the governor, an
arrangement which still endures. Another consequence demands
longer description.
At that time strange and terrible crimes were moving under the
surface of Indian life. Timorously but successfully the government
had legislated against sati,^ never much in vogue in Madras.
Female infanticide, though known among the Khonds, concerned
that presidency little. In 1836 legislative and executive measures were
initiated against thagi. That crime, too, was alien to Madras, though,
in the 'thirties, gangs were at work in Anantapur, and sundry ruffians
were hanged and gibbeted. The crime which Russell's campaigns
brought into prominence (its existence had been reported nearly
seventy years before) was human sacrifice as practised under the
name of Meriah (Mervi) among the Khonds of Ganjam. The victims
were bought or were dedicated as children to the earth-goddess. They
were treated with veneration till their time came, often after a lapse
of many years, and, on attaining maturity, a Meriah boy would be
given a Meriah girl to wife ; the children born to such a couple were
victims by heredity. Sacrifices were so arranged that each family
should have at least once a year a strip of flesh for burial in the family-
land to ensure good crops. When the victim's turn came, he or she
was put to death after strange ceremonies and in revolting ways ; the
flesh was stripped off, sometimes while the poor wretch was still
alive, and distributed. This practice prevailed in the hills of Ganjam,
Vizagapatam and neighbouring tracts. A military officer was deputed
to stop it and tactfully won over the tribes. In 1842 two tribes agreed
to give up the custom, if permitted to denounce the government as
responsible for their apostasy. Other tribes followed suit, those of
Boad celebrating their conversion by a grand, final slaughter of
120 victims, just half the number immolated on a New Moon Day
in 1 84 1. By India Act XXI of 1845 ^^^ Government of India placed
the localities affected by the custom under the sole jurisdiction of
special agents appointed by the governments of Bengal and Madras
and the governor of Bengal, and made them amenable to rules framed
by itself This arrangement lasted till 1861, but the last Meriah
sacrifice in Madras seems to have occurred in 1855. It is reckoned
that between 1837 and 1854 over 1500 destined victims were saved.
A few words may be added here about slavery which, usually in
a mild form, existed on the west coast and in the Tamil country. In
the former area there were both predial and personal slaves, and
there had been some export trade in slaves which, however, was early
* Madras Reg. i of 1830.
THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT 41
made illegal.^ In the latter area the slaves were predial only (apart
from a certain amount of slavery "on contract") and the institution
was already dying out in 1819.^ Nevertheless, certain classes of
labourers used in some parts to be sold or mortgaged with the land
until the passing of India Act V of 1843, which declared that no rights
arising out of slavery should be enforced by the courts. Even in the
present century, however, deeds of sale of land have occasionally
contained a clause transferring to the purchaser the debt which
bound the farm-labourers to the vendor by a chain hardly differing
from that of slavery.
By 1 803 the movements and hazards of half a century had secured
to Madras a territory of a hundred and forty thousand square miles.
The subsequent changes in the outline of the presidency have been
few. Ganara gained a bit from Goorg in the war of 1834, but lost
more by transfer to Bombay in 1862; the tributary state of Kurnool
was annexed in 1839, and certain parings off the Gentral Provinces
were allotted to Godavari in and after 1874. To these alterations may
be added the cession to the Gompany in 181 8 of suzerainty over the
Sandur state.
The government was composed of a governor and a council of three
senior merchants^ who had power to legislate*, but were in entire
subordination to the governor-general in council at Fort William.^
Such was the position until 1833 when,^ with a view to centralise all
authority in the governor-general of India in council, as he was thence-
forward to be called, the power to legislate was withdrawn and the
court of directors was authorised to reduce or abolish any provincial
council. This last provision did not receive effect, for the directors,
although they reduced the civilian councillors to two, counter-
balanced this by adding the local commander-in-chief to the council.'
In 1 786 a Board of Trade and a Board of Revenue had been esta-
blished, each consisting of three members with a member of council as
president. The former body looked after the commercial interests of
the Gompany, but its business dwindled into insignificance after the
abolition of the Indian monopoly^ and it disappeared in 1825. At
the outset the Board of Revenue had, extra-legally, certain judicial
powers. These were confirmed for parts of the country by Regulation i
of 1803, but were extinguished soon afterwards. ^ It became by
Regulation v of 1804 a Gourt of Wards for the presidency and had for
many years control over religious and other endowments.^° Until 1887
^ 51 Geo. Ill, c. 23, and Reg. ii of 1 812 (repealed by Reg. n of 1826).
2 Revenue Board's Proceedings, 5 January, i8i8, and 25 November, 181 9.
^ 24 Geo. Ill, c. 25, and 33 Geo. Ill, c. 52. Writers, factors and junior and senior
merchants represented at the time the covenanted civil service.
* 39 and 40 Geo. Ill, c. 79, and 47 Geo. Ill, sess. 2, c. 68.
» 33 Geo. Ill, c. 52. * 3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 85.
' Political Dispatch, No. 18, 27 December, 1833.
8 53 Geo. Ill, c. 155. » Reg. it of 1806. " Reg. vn of 181 7.
42 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
the united board exercised general supervision over revenue matters.
In that year the portfolio system was introduced, the number of
members was raised to four (the councillor-president had disappeared
long before) and the various branches of the revenue administration
were distributed among the members as commissioners.
The country was, and is, divided into districts^ which have varied
in number from twenty to twenty-six, and these again into taluks
which now average about 700 square miles. At the head of the
district stands the collector, who first appears on the scene in 1787.
The twentieth century found him still the local representative of
government; chief magistrate ; head of the Land Revenue and Forest
Departments ; as president of the District Board, supervising roads,
schools and hospitals ; possessed of a measure of control over the police
and municipalities; as a revenue judge, exercising summary juris-
diction in many matters. In his revenue capacity he is in direct
subordination to the board, to which body appeals lie against many
of his orders, executive and judicial. To collectors were assigned in
1792 covenanted assistants, and, later on, fixed territorial jurisdictions
were allotted to the assistant and subordinate collectors in the form
of divisions made up of groups of taluks wherein they exercise most of
the powers possessed by collectors. The taluks were from the first under
Indian tahsildars; above them all the executive officers were English.
No practical steps were taken to open the higher executive to natives
of the country until India Act I of 1857 authorised the appointment
of deputy-collectors, who occupy a position similar to that of
covenanted divisional officers.
A Supreme Court had been established in 1801 ^ but its jurisdiction
was almost wholly confined to Madras town. The administration of
justice up-country was conducted under the system introduced in
1802-6 and modified by the legislation of 181 6. The reforms of the
latter year were designed to reduce expense and hasten disposal by
larger employment of native agency, to simplify litigation by reverting
to earlier methods whereby civil and criminal cases were largely
disposed of in the village, and to ensure greater control over crime by
restoring to collectors magisterial powers and the supervision of the
police. The central court for up-country purposes consisted of a body
of judges presided over by a member of council.^ On its civil side this
tribunal was called "sadr adalat"; on its criminal side, "sadr
faujdari adalat". Below this body functioned four provincial courts
dealing with most of the civil appeals and with suits over Rs. 5000;
these bodies, as courts of circuit, disposed also of all the more im-
portant criminal work.* In the district the principal civil judge was
^ Formerly called zillahs, the taluks being styled districts.
» 39 & 40 Geo. Ill, c. 79.
' Regs. V and viii of 1802 and in of 1807. This court, as at first constituted, consisted
of the governor in council.
* Regs, rv and vn of 1802 and xn of 1809.
JUDICIAL ORGANISATION 43
the zillah judge, assisted sometimes by registers or assistant judges to
whom actions might be referred for disposal.^ The presiding officers
of all the above courts were European covenanted civilians, who were
assisted on legal points by Indian law officers. ^ Below came three
classes of native judges, namely, sadr amins to whom suits up to Rs. 300
might be referred,^ district munsiffs who were authorised to deal with
suits up to Rs. 200* and village headmen or munsiffs who had power to
dispose of certain cases not exceeding in value Rs. 10 or, with the
consent of the parties, Rs. loo.^ Both the district and the village
munsiffs were required, on demand, to summon panchayats, or bodies
of arbitrators, which had unlimited jurisdiction in respect of the
classes of cases which might be referred to them.®
Within the district the principal criminal jurisdiction was vested
in the zillah judge to whom the register gave help as assistant criminal
judge, but six months' imprisonment was the limit of the latter's
powers."^ The collector as magistrate and his covenanted assistants as
assistant magistrates had a very restricted power of punishment, their
main duty being the arrest and commitment of offenders.^ Certain
petty misdemeanours were punishable by tahsildars and village head-
men.^ For want of anything better, the Muhammadan criminal law,
as interpreted by the law officers and modified from time to time by
enactment, was applied in the criminal courts until the Penal Code
came into force in 1862.
Such were the judicial arrangements as they stood in 1818; and of
the reforms carried out in 1816 none was more important adminis-
tratively than the severance of the unsuitable association of the judge
with the magistracy and police, none more popular than the creation
of the district munsiffs. ^^ It was, in fact, the popularity of these latter
officers which rendered ineffectual the effort to revive the old method
of adjudication by panchayats. Soon afterwards we find the directors
pressing for a still more extended use of Indian agency and, as a con-
sequence, provision was made for the establishment of " auxiliary "
and "native" civil and criminal courts, possessing in defined areas
jurisdiction on the same lines as that exercised by the zillah and
criminal judge. ^^ The ^'auxiliary" judges differed from the " native "
judges in that they had jurisdiction in respect of Europeans and
Americans, but they disappeared in time, whereas the "native"
judges, under changed titles (they were known as principal sadr amins
after 1836), have lasted to the present day. It was at this point that
^ Regs. II of 1802 and vii and xii of 1809.
^ Abolished by India Act XI of 1864. They were also employed as sadr amins.
' Regs, vii and x of 1809 and vni of 1816.
* Reg. VI of 1816. ^ Reg. rv of 1816. * Regs, v and vn of 1816.
' Reg. X of 1 81 6. The limit was raised to two years' imprisonment in certain cases by
Reg. VI of 1822.
8 Reg. IX of 1 81 6. » Reg. xi of 181 6.
^" They took the place of the "native conmiissioners " of 1802 with jurisdiction up to
Rs. 80. 11 Regs. I, n, vii and vni of 1827.
44 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
a modified form of the English jury-system was introduced into the
courts of circuit by Regulation x of 1827.
A new phase opened with India Act VII of 1843. The provincial
courts of civil appeal and circuit and the zillah courts were abolished
and their civil and criminal powers were distributed between new
"civil and sessions " judges of the zillah and the principal sadr amins
(or the "auxiliary" judges); at the same time the powers of the
magistrates were substantially enlarged. In the result, whereas in
1802 no Indian could try a criminal case or deal with a suit valued
at more than Rs. 80, an Indian judge might now adjudicate suits up
to Rs. 10,000 in value and pass sentences of two years' imprisonment.
There was an extension in the same direction later, ^ when district
munsiffs were conceded a limited criminal jurisdiction.
At the beginning of the present period the zamindari system pre-
vailed in the Northern Circars, Salem, Ghingleput and certain other
areas ; village leases in the Ceded districts, Nellore, the Arcots, Palnad,
Trichinopoly, Tinnevelly and Tanjore ; ryotwari in Malabar, Canara,
Goimbatore, Madura and Dindigul.^
As a revenue system, the zamindari settlement Wcis not a success,
even where it had for basis the old estates of poligars ; as to the artificial
estates, or muttahs, they came tumbling down almost as soon as they
were set up. The process of decay was both rapid and long continued,
so that we find the whole of the Guntur coUectorate and much of the
Masulipatam coUectorate passing over from zamindari to ryotwari
between 1835 and 1849, and now the system applies to less than one-
fourth of the presidency. Certain features of the settlement call for
further remarks.
After long discussion in Bengal it was decided that the demand on
the estates should be fixed in perpetuity. The principle of an un-
alterable assessment is not in favour nowadays, but, throughout the
first half of the last century, there prevailed in Madras, vaguely felt
rather than definitely asserted, an idea that, in all forms of land-
revenue settlement, fixity of demand should be aimed at. This view
was not always endorsed by the court of directors, but it commended
itself to the secretary of state as late as 1862, and in 1868 the Board
of Revenue had nothing to say against a permanent ryotwari settle-
ment. Though a rapid rise in prices led to the abandonment of the
notion, it was not formally renounced until 1883.^
In investing zamindars with "the proprietary right of the soil", the
legislature gave rise to misconceptions which had to be corrected later
by a declaration that there was no intention to infringe the rights of
third parties.* There never had been such intention, but the legisla-
1 India Act XII of 1854.
* Revenue Board's Proceedings, 5 January, 181 8.
■ Ck)urt's Dispatch, 16 December, 181 2 {Revenue Selections^ 1820, vol. i^; Board's Pro-
ceedings, No. 6369, 8 September, 1868; S. of S. Dispatch, 28 March, 1883, and Baden
Powell, I, 340. * Reg. iv of 1822.
THE ZAMINDARI SETTLEMENT 45
tion of 1802^ gave insufficient protection to the cultivators, while
granting to the zamindars powers of distraint and ejectment which
could be challenged only through a regular suit. This defect led to
Regulation v of 1822, which brought the collector in as a summary
arbitrator between zamindar and occupier, an arrangement which
worked with some success until the courts began to admit claims to
determine rents on a competitive basis and to alter the customary
modes of sharing the crops. Act VIII of 1865 was intended to settle
these and other questions but caused much greater confusion by
declaring that all contracts for rent, express or implied, must be
enforced. The position was not made clear until the Estates Land
Act, 1908, came into operation. This elaborate enactment brought
the revenue courts into summary operation in all relations between
zamindar and ryot, conferred, in express terms, right of permanent
occupancy upon most of the zamindar ryots, and enabled others to
secure that privilege by means of a small payment. The need for
protecting the tenants had been mainly felt in the Telugu country;
among the Tamils there had always been a much stronger sense of
private property in land and the ryot's claim to occupancy right had
generally been accepted. So much for the cultivators. The question
whether the zamindars themselves did not need protection was con-
sidered by Munro,^ but nearly eighty years elapsed before anything
was done in that direction. Then, when debt and suits for partition
had broken up various estates, it became a matter of concern to the
government to preserve the rest. The case of indebtedness was met by
authorising the government, on request, to place embarrassed estates
under the Court of Wards. ^ The other threat had arisen from a change
in judicial opinion, the courts receding from the position that im-
partibility and inalienability attach by general custom to the ancient
zamindaris, and holding that the existence of these attributes must
be proved for each individual estate. This dictum gave rise to much
ruinous litigation, but, after considerable delay, a remedy was pro-
vided in the form of a law which imposed restrictions upon the
alienation of specified estates, and declared them to be impartible
and heritable by a single heir.*
The decennial leases, introduced by the Madras Government "to
become a fixed settlement if approved" and immediately condemned
by the court of directors,^ were drawing to a close when the present
period opens and did not everywhere run their full course. With the
expiration of the last of them, the village lease system disappeared
except in a few peculiar localities. The decennial leases had been
^ Regs. XXV and xxxii of 1802.
* Minute, 19 September, 1820.
» Act IV of 1899.
* Act II of 1904, replacing similar acts of 1903 and 1902; see also Srinivasa Ragha-
vachari, Progress of the Madras Presidency y p. 245.
* Dispatches, 16 December, 1812, and 16 December, 1813.
46 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
granted on more lenient terms than the triennial ones, but the general
result of the arrangement never came under review. According to
the Board of Revenue the leases were working satisfactorily in 1818/
but the board was strongly prejudiced and the reports from individual
districts are by no means suggestive of success. The board's bias in
favour of village leases may, perhaps, be explained in part by the
existence in portions of the Tamil country of a tenure to which they
really seemed to be thoroughly well adapted. This tenure, commonly
known as mirasi right, was decaying but sufficiently alive to engender
a vast and enthusiastic correspondence in which the varying views of
the government are generally in opposition to the varying views of
the board. In this tenure the ownership of each village (subject to
the usual claim of the state to a share of the produce) vested in a single
mirasidar or, more commonly, in a body of mirasidars. From the tilth
the mirasidars derived a share of the produce and, in some places,
grain-fees also; over the waste they claimed certain privileges. The
main controversy arose over the questions whether a ryotwari settle-
ment should be made with the mirasidars or the actual cultivators, and
whedier the mirasidars had a right to prevent the state from assigning
the waste for cultivation. The former point may be considered to have
been setded by the cautious instructions of the directors to respect
the rights of the mirasidars but to be chary of ousting persons already
recognised as owners, and to dispose of all disputes on their merits. ^
On the latter point the final decision was that the mirasidars had no
power to keep waste out of cultivation, but should have the first
refusal of any part applied for by a non-mirasidar.^ The government
showed a disposition to go back on this decision, but was vigorously
reproved by the board and overruled by the directors.*
Officially the mirasi system is dead, but traces of it survive in
Chingleput, where the ordinary assessment is in some cases reduced
to allow of the payment to old mirasi families of sums in lieu of
former claims upon the cultivators.
Ryotwari falls into three stages, early, middle and late, and the
only description common to all is that it is a mode of settlement with
small farmers, so small, indeed, that their average holding is, on
recent figures, only about 6 J acres. Nowadays the tenure is regarded
as possessing the following properties: the registered occupier is, so
far as concerns government, free to alienate, encumber and devise his
land at discretion; subject to unimportant qualifications, he may at
any time reUnquish any portion of his holding; he can never be ousted
unless he fails to pay regularly the assessment fixed on the land or any
* Prcx:cedings, 5 January, 181 8. The vigorous style of this paper, a masterly bit of work,
shows the warm concern of the board in the result of the duel between village lease and
ryotwari.
' Dispatch, 1 8 August, 1824.
* Dispatches, No. 8, 28 July, 1841, and No. 17, 3 July, 1844.
* Dispatch, 17 December, 1856.
THE RYOTWARI SETTLEMENT 47
other charge by law recoverable as land revenue,^ in which case his
land may be attached and sold to the extent necessary to discharge
the debt ; ^ no additional charge may be imposed on account of im-
provements effected at the ryot's cost, but a separate charge may be
made for minerals extracted; the rate of assessment is liable to
alteration on the expiry of the specified period for which it has been
fixed and then only. But these peculiarities have been of gradual
growth ; not one of them can be said to have been universally applicable
to early ryotwari which, introduced by Read, approved by the
directors as an experiment, widely extended by Munro and others,
was abruptly brought to an end in some districts by the zamindari
settlement, in others by the village leases.
The re-introduction of ryotwari between 181 3 and 1822 marks the
beginning of middle ryotwari — a period of chaos. To begin with there
was no proper basis of survey on which to construct it. Some sur-
veying had been done in early ryotwari, and sometimes done well
though unprofessionally, but large areas had not been surveyed at all
and in others the survey had been mere pretence; there were no
boundary marks, no maps and very few survey-records of any sort.
In middle ryotwari nothing was done to cure these defects, and without
a proper survey there could be no systematic assessment.
By old custom the ryot and the state shared the crop or its cash
equivalent. In theory the ryot generally got about half, in practice
often only a fifth or less.^ Read assigned to the state one-third of the
gross value of the crop on dry land and two-fifths on irrigated land ;
Munro was forced, in the Ceded districts, to give the state nearly half
but regarded one-third as the proper figure. Under the Company
the assessment was always fixed in terms of money, but the rates
attached to different soils had no very close relation to output, even
where efforts were made to establish such relation. Extraneous
matters were taken into consideration, such as the ryot's caste, his
means, even his health ; and sometimes the starting-point was a lump
sum for the district which was distributed among the villages and
then individual demands had to be adjusted to make good the charge
on the village. Also the classifier generally had an eye to the old
revenue and in places there was little or no attempt to revise the
current rates. On the whole the earliest assessments under the Com-
pany were too high. The imposition upon early ryotwari of the
zamindari settlement here and the village leases there made matters
worse, the identification of certain rates with certain fields dropping
out of sight. In fact the innumerable rates of middle ryotwari,
although supposed to represent 50 per cent, on wet and 33 per cent,
on dry,4 were usually only the traditional rates recorded in the village
^ E.g. the tax on land leviable under the Local Boards Act.
2 Act II of 1864, s. 44. * Revenue Board's Proceedings, 5 January, 181 8.
* Cons. No. 951, 14 August, 1855 {SelectionSy Madras, New Series, vol. un).
48 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
registers which had been open to manipulation by dishonest village
accountants; and these traditional rates were in general excessive,
varied from village to village, and were not based on any apparent
principle. Thus the vice of immoderate assessment infected both early
and middle ryotwari and many years passed before there was any
systematic attempt to cure the evil. Under Indian rule the demand
upon the land had been generally met because village officers and
ryots conspired to defraud the state by concealing cultivation and in
Other ways. Under the closer control of European officers, such
practices became more difficult, and the effects of over-assessment
were more felt. Even under these conditions agriculture might have
made some progress, had it not been for the twenty-year spell of
falling prices which began in 1830. The strain due to this cause
combined with local customs to produce that multiplicity of methods
which render middle ryotwari so complicated. The assessment might
be determined by measurement or estimate of the crop on the ground;
or might vary from year to year with the rise and fall of prices ; or
might be fixed for the whole holding which was practically an
unchangeable unit by reason of checks upon the surrender of portions ;
or might be charged on the village, the ryots, village officers or
collector determining the individual liabilities, with or without
periodical redistribution of land or compulsory transfers of holdings
on demand; or it might be settled with the individual in accordance,
more or less, with modern principles. It was possible to find in vogue
at the same time in one district half a dozen of these methods, all
figuring as forms of ryotwari. But, if the growing poverty of the ryots
conduced to the appearance of a variety of shifts for raising the
revenue, it also forced on the authorities the abolition of objectionable
taxes, various local reductions in rates of assessment and the discon-
tinuance of mischievous practices which had come down to middle
ryotwari from earlier times. From the outset the custom of holding
one ryot responsible for the arrears of another was repudiated. Then
the ancient but unauthorised practice of "inducing" ryots to take up
more land than they wanted died out, and various checks on the firee
surrender of land were removed. Ryots' improvements used to be
taxed by the levy of higher rates on the valuable crops raised under
private wells; but one concession after another was granted, until
assessment became wholly irrespective of profits due to well-sinking.
The old custom of granting advances to paupers to enable them to
carry on cultivation had done much more harm than good, and was
abandoned. And, as these practices disappeared, there went with
them much of the monstrous system of " remissions " which had grown
up in consequence of them and which had converted the annual
settiement into a debasing scramble for charity. The various changes
which brought the theory of ryotwari to its present form left un-
touched, however, the main defect — an excessive, unequal and
SURVEY AND SETTLEMENT 49
unsystematic assessment. It was not until 1855 that the government
faced the long-overdue reform, and proposed to carry out a pro-
fessional field-survey of the presidency accompanied by a detailed
classification of soils and valuation of them for assessment.^ It was
apparently anticipated that the work could be done once for all in
twenty years, but the Survey and Settlement Departments have been
busy ever since.
The principles of settlement as laid down on this occasion are on
lines essentially modern, but discussion ensued as to whether the state
share of the produce should be calculated on the gross crop or on the
value of the crop after deducting cultivation expenses and as to the
period for which the assessment should remain unchangeable, and it
was not until 1864 that it was decided that the government share
should be limited to half the net value of the crop. The period of each
settlement was then fixed at thirty years, though later it was left to
the discretion of the government. Previously there had been no
"period of settlement", the ryot holding on indefinitely, for, so long
as it was the "general and unhesitating belief" that the ryotwari rates
then in force could never be enhanced, that is, up to 1855,2 the need
for fixing a period did not arise. Middle ryotwari ended in each
district with the introduction of settlements under the scheme of
1855-.*
This great reform involved the reconstitution of the Survey Depart-
ment which, originating in 1 800 for trigonometrical and topographical
work, had since 18 18 been employed on the latter only. The topo-
graphical business was taken over, in 1886, by the Government of
India, and the department, being then solely concerned with revenue
survey, came under the control of the Board of Revenue in 1903, when
also, to avoid periodical resurveys, the Land Records Department was
fully organised for the purpose of maintaining boundary marks and
indicating changes of ownership on the field-sketches.
The ryotwari system of the west coast, as peculiar in some respects,
demands a passing notice. Among the scattered farmers of the
sequestered valleys of Malabar no village system could arise ; in a
country where the rajas took their dues in military service alone no
room could be found for zamindars. So firom the first ryotwari was
applied. In 1805 it was proclaimed that the settlement would be with
the principal landholders or janmis, but difficulties arose because many
janmis had fled before the Mysore invasion, and the Mysore Govern-
ment, in introducing a land-tax, had often settled with the principal
occupants or kanomdars. As a consequence the latter were frequently
^ Cons. No. 951, 14 August, 1855 {Selections, Madras, New Series, vol. liii). The govern-
ment pointed out that in thirty-four years there had been hardly any extension of cultiva-
tion and that of the registered arable land less than a half was under the plough.
^ Revenue Board's Proceedings, No. 6369, 8 September, 1868.
* For the general subject of the ryotwari system, of. Nicholson, District Manual of Coim-
batore, chap. v.
50 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
held responsible for the revenue until, in 1889, the High Court
declared this practice to be illegal. That decision resulted in Act III
of 1896 enabling the collector to determine in whom the ownership
resided, and permitting in certain cases the joint registration of both
landholder and occupant. But the position of the kanomdars is so
peculiar that, in the theoretical distribution of the produce in
Malabar, three persons are taken into account, instead of two only,
namely, the state, the landholder and the occupant. The ryotwari
of South Canara resembles in some respects that of Malabar.
Yet another form of tenure calls for notice, as it prevails in not far
short of a tenth of the presidency. Inams are grants, complete or
partial, of the state's interest in land; they may be made in perpetuity
or for a period, and commonly take the form of an assignment of the
land-revenue derivable from a given area. They were freely granted
in support of public offices or charitable or religious institutions, for
the maintenance of Brahmans, or for personal and private reasons.
In the anarchy of the eighteenth century, this mode of intercepting
the public revenue attained monstrous dimensions, many grants being
made by persons who had no authority to bestow them, while village
officers transferred large areas to themselves as inam by mere altera-
tion of the accounts. On British acquisition many of the obviously
unauthorised assignments were cancelled and arrangements were
made by Regulation xxxi of 1802 for an investigation of titles which,
however, the collectors were mostly too busy to carry out. Again, in
Regulation v of 1831, efforts were made to check the alienation of
inams held by village and other officers, and in 1845 an order was
passed to stay devolution by adoption, and to limit private charitable
grants to existing lives. This last order created a disturbance.
Narasimha Reddi, a disappointed claimant of a poligar family
pension, secured a following among the ^'Kattubadi peons" of the
Ceded districts, who anticipated a resumption of their inams and
raised a rebellion in 1847. Troops had to be called out and some
months passed before Narasimha was caught in the hills and hanged.
The incident taught the need for caution, but it was impossible to
tolerate indefinitely the serious loss of revenue due to former fraud,
and the labour of investigating the incessant disputes which arose
over the innumerable assignments. ^ A special commissioner was
therefore appointed in 1859 to deal with the whole question on liberal
lines, and an enormous number of inams were enfranchised in the
next ten years, the government surrendering its right to resume, claim
service, or restrain alienation in return for a quit-rent. There remain,
however, many inams which, for various reasons, it has not been
deemed proper to enfranchise.
The leading principle of ryotwari, that assessment depends on the
nature of the soil, not on that of the crop, though enunciated in a
* Ck>n8. No. 951, 14 August, 1855 {Selections, Madras, New Scries, vol. un).
IRRIGATION
51
draft regulation framed in 1817,^ did not receive eifect until late in
the middle period when the special rates charged on "garden" lands
began to disappear, and the principle must always be subsidiary to
the primary division of cultivation into "dry" and "wet". There is
clear justification for adopting the valuable rice-crop as the basis of
the assessment on wet land, seeing that it owes its existence to water
from public sources. Most of the irrigation is by "tanks" which vary
in size from mere ponds to lakes covering over twenty square miles,
and which number in the ryotwari area nearly 32,000 (exclusive of
private reservoirs). Almost all the tanks antedate British acquisition
but, with the exception of the Grand Anikat (dam) on the Kaveri,
native works for the utilisation of river water are few and unimportant.
The principal English irrigation works are the Upper and Lower
Anikats on the Kaveri and Goleroon, the delta systems of the
Godavari and Kistna, and the Periyar dam. The genius of Sir Arthur
Cotton found its fullest scope on the Kaveri-Coleroon and Godavari.
The Kaveri-Coleroon works were begun in 1836 and, with the re-
modelled Grand Anikat, they provide water for nearly a million
acres. The Godavari dam, first suggested in 1798, was begun in 1846
and secures over half a million acres. Famine gave the impetus which
started in 1850 the almost equally extensive Kistna system. The
Periyar work is remarkable, not for the acreage served, but for diffi-
culties overcome in carrying out its bold conception. The idea
received the approval of "twelve intelligent men" deputed in 1798
by a raja of Ramnad, was condemned later, was revived in the 'sixties
and transformed into action in 1884. The dam, 176 feet high, was not
finished until 1895.
The origin of the Public Works Department which has done so
much for Madras is to be found in the engineering branch of the
Military Board established in 1 786, but at first irrigation works were
in the hands of collectors who were later assisted by superintendents.
A Maramat (Repair) Department was instituted in 181 9 under an
Inspector-General of Civil Estimates for whom was substituted later
the chief engineer in charge of the Military Board's engineering
department. The Maramat Department was placed under the general
control of the Board of Revenue in 1825, ^^^ ^^ later organised
into divisions under civil engineers. The position as determined in
1845 ^^s this: irrigation works, canals, civil buildings and minor
roads and bridges were under the Maramat Department ; main roads
were under a Superintendent of Roads; military roads and buildings
and those in Madras town were under the Military Board. The
executive officers of the Maramat Department were the collectors and
their subordinates, over whom there was little professional super-
vision. The arrangements generally were strongly condemned by a
committee sitting in 1852 and six years later there came into being
* Revenue Selectionsy 1820, vol. i.
4-2
52 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
the Public Works Department in its modern form, as an agency for
execution as well as supervision. The Maramat Department then
disappeared, but the new department was reorganised again and
again, the changes being mainly due to the difficulty in securing
effective management of the scattered smaller tanks. Finally, about
1882, there was a partial reversion to the old Maramat system, the
revenue officers being made responsible for the ordinary repairs to
minor tanks.
At the British acquisition, the poligars, within their dominions,
controlled the police and collected not only the revenue charged on
the land but also a variety of other taxes. In theory they may have
been regarded as mere agents of the Muhammadan government,
occupying for their palayams the same position as the renters held
outside the palayams and being remunerated by a commission on their
collections ; in practice they were much more, collecting on their own
behalf, and disgorging only under compulsion. When, however, the
zamindari settlement came into operation, the government announced^
its intention to assume direct control of the police and taxation, and
the history of the taxes concerned may now be traced into more
recent times.
The mohatarfa was a taix on trades and occupations. In any district
it might be levied on more than a hundred classes of persons or things
(for the implements of business were sometimes taxed), but its
incidence and rate were matters of arbitrary distinction and often
varied from village to village. *'It is a poll-tax, a house-tax, a cattle-
stall-tax and a caste-tax. The beggar is taxed because he is a beggar ;
the widow is taxed because she is destitute" — so it was said in 1842.
Though many of these demands had been abandoned, enough re-
mained to render mohatarfa a source of much oppression. The only
thing to be said for it is that, if, in 1852, a million persons contributed,
they did not contribute much. In some places the tax formed a rough
income-tax on the profits of trade. This form, called visabadi, was
brought under formal control by Regulation iv of 181 8. The govern-
ment fixed the total demand on a district so as not to exceed 10 per
cent, of the estimated profits of the traders therein; the collector
divided this among the taluks and the contributors settled the
individual demands among themselves.
In Coimbatore one of the items of mohatarfa was tobacco. This was
first abolished, and then revived, as a separate source of revenue, in
1807, 'wben the sale of tobacco was made a government monopoly in
Malabar and Ganara. Soon afterwards all the cultivation of tobacco
there and in Coimbatore was prohibited except under licence. ^ There
were subsequent changes of system, but in every form the tax was
accompanied by fraud and "frightful abuses", while in Malabar
smuggling arose on so large and determined a scale that troops had
* Reg. XXV of 1802. '* Regs, vii and viii of 181 1.
MOHATARFA 53
to be employed to deal with it. The tobacco monopoly and its
accompaniments were abolished in 1852.
Embarrassments due to the Mutiny led to a general Indian income-
tax which was supplemented by a Licence Tax Act^ abolishing the
mohatarfa tax and substituting a system of licences for carrying on
trades, industries and callings. This act disappeared in later legislative
shufflings, but, to make good the outlay on famine, the licensing
system was revived in Madras, and persons carrying on businesses
were required, if their incomes exceeded Rs. 200, to pay for licences
fixed sums varying roughly according to their receipts. 2 This licence
tax was a descendant of the mohatarfa. As an item of general taxation
it was displaced finally on the revival of the income-tax in 1886; but
the mohatarfa survives to this day in municipal areas in the form of a
graduated tax on arts, professions and callings.
The original mo^fltor/^ was a bad enough tax, but the inland sayer was
far worse. This was a duty levied on articles of all sorts in transit and
had developed into a national calamity. The rates were variable and
capricious, there was no control over the tax-gatherers who charged
practically what they chose, and revenue renters and poligars took
to establishing posts and duties at pleasure, so that it was common for
goods to come under charge at least once in every ten miles. The
injury to trade was mortal. This wicked impost was replaced in 1803
by frontier and town duties leviable ad valorem on specified goods
crossing the frontier or passing into selected towns. ^ Madras town
and the west coast came under separate rules which need not be
detailed. The duties were for a time collected by official agency, but
there was so much fraud that later the collection of the duties was
farmed out.* Even in the form finally taken by this impost, it could
not be otherwise than mischievous, and it was discontinued under
India Act VI of 1844.
Little need be said about the duties on sea-borne trade. They were
put on a basis of law in 1803 ;5 passed from the control of the Board of
Revenue to that of the Board of Trade in 1808;^ and were replaced
under the former authority in 1825. The duties on coastal trade were
abandoned in 1844, and in 1859'' ^ uniform tariff was substituted for
the separate provincial rates theretofore levied.
In Muhammadan times the tax on salt took the form of a share of
the output of the salt pans, of a rent for privilege of manufacture, or of
a transit duty on leaving the factory. The Company established a
monopoly.^ Manufacture and sale were placed under the direction
of a General Agent working under the Board of Revenue, but the
immediate management was in the hands of collectors. The govern-
ment fixed the price for sale to the public, while the agent settled the
1 India Act XVIII of 1861. 2 Act III of 1878.
' Reg. XII. See also amending and repealing Regs, xv of 1808 and i of 181 2.
* Reg. V of 1 82 1. ^ Regs. IX and XI. ^ Reg. xv.
' India Act VII. « Reg. i of 1805.
54 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
sites of factories and the amount to be made each year. Actual
manufacture was conducted by persons having a customary right to
make salt, their interests in the output being converted into cash
payments. The General Agent was soon got rid of, and the business
went on under the board, collectors and their assistants being re-
munerated for their trouble by a commission which lasted until 1836.
To relieve government of the position of sole vendor, and in the hope
of improving the quality of salt, an Excise Act was passed (VI of
187 1). On the extension of this act to any place, the monopoly
system ceased to apply there, manufacture was permitted under
licence, an excise-duty became payable on removal from the place
of storage, and distribution and sale were left to private arrangement.
The monopoly was, however, retained in places as affording a means
of controlling the price. From the first there had been much com-
petition with the government salt through the manufacture in places
of coarse salt out of saline earths. There was long discussion over the
prevention of this practice which at times led to affrays with the
police, and it was made an offence in 1878.^ In that year, too,
collectors ceased to be immediately concerned with the salt revenue,
a commissioner with a separate establishment taking over control. ^
Soon afterwards the Commissioner of Salt took charge of the Abkari
Department also, and in 1887 he became a member of the Board of
Revenue. In 1889 a new act replaced the old laws. This made
no material change, for it continued both the monopoly and the
excise system. There is also in vogue a third system under which
licensees for general sale (as opposed to licensees for sale to govern-
ment) can be required to deliver to government a specified quantity
before proceeding to manufacture for sale to the public. Since 1882
the rate of duty on salt has been determined for the whole country
by the Government of India.^
The abkari tax, or tax on intoxicating liquors and drugs, is derived
mainly from arrack (distilled as a rule from palm-juice or crude sugar)
and toddy (fermented palm-juice). In continuing this old impost,
the English administrators asserted from the outset the principle that
consumption should be checked. The somewhat uncertain pursuit of
this ideal led through such a bewildering jungle of enactments, rules
and local practices, that the path taken can be indicated only roughly
here. Pursuant to old custom Regulation i of 1808 contemplated
leasing the right to make and sell arrack, but it also provided for the
licensing of single shops. The collector was responsible and received
a commission for his trouble. Later the law was extended to toddy*
and an alternative system of direct official management was authorised.
In practice there was no effective limit to the number of retail shops.
These might be separately licensed, usually with a primitive still
1 Act II. Act VI of 1878. * Act IV of 1889.
• India Act XII. * Reg. i of 1820.
ABKARI
55
attached/ or they might be opened under private arrangement with
the lessee of the rights of manufacture and sale over a large area.
Minimum sale-prices were prescribed but, as they had no relation to
strength, they had little effect in regulating consumption. The obvious
lack of control led in 1 869 to measures for suppressing outstills and
concentrating manufacture in large distilleries. The contractor re-
ceived the monopoly of manufacture and supply for a large area, paid
stillhead duty, guaranteed a minimum revenue, agreed to observe
certain price-limits and was responsible for keeping down illicit
practices. The stillhead duty provided a means of controlling con-
sumption, but the system did not answer expectations and "free
supply" came in from 1884. Manufacture and supply were now
separated from sale; anybody could get a licence for a distillery,
arranging prices with the licensed vendors, and the government
undertook prevention. Later came the "contract distillery system"
under which the sole privilege of manufacture and supply in a given
area is disposed of by tender, the successful tenderer having a mono-
poly of supply of his own liquor to retail vendors at rates fixed by
government and paying stillhead duty on all issues; the right of retail
vend is sold annually by separate shops. This is the prevailing system,
but in some parts the right of manufacture and sale is still rented out,
the number of stills being limited as much as possible, and the number
and sites of shops being fixed beforehand. The right to sell arrack has
long been separated from that to sell toddy. Fermented toddy is now
taxed in the form of rents for retail shops and (in the greater part of
the presidency) by means of the tree-tax system under which a fixed
fee is charged for each tree which it is proposed to tap under
licence.
Act I of 1886 authorised the government to place abkari adminis-
tration under a commissioner, and the Commissioner of Salt was put
in charge of it. Since 1887 the commissioner of the two departments
has been a member of the Board of Revenue. Finally excise advisory
committees, containing a non-official element, were instituted to
advise as to the location of shops.
The withdrawal from the poligars of authority over the police was
the most important abridgment of their powers effected by Regu-
lation XXV of 1802, but the discharge of the kavalgars (watchers) and
the resumption of many of their inams had unexpected results.
Deprived of responsibility and emoluments, the kavalgars, who were
largely recruited from criminal tribes, had no inducement to restrain
the activities of their fellow-castemen. Though no longer recognised
by the government, they continued to receive fees from the villagers
and became intermediaries in a vast system of blackmail from which
the southern districts have never been able to shake themselves free.
The tribesmen steal (cattle as a rule), the owner approaches the
^ In Tinnevelly district, in 1866, there were 3642 stills, and there had been more.
56 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
kavalgar, restoration is arranged on terms, and the ransom is shared
between the kavalgar and the thieves.
The kavalgars had been at first succeeded by police darogas and
thanadars, operating, as in Bengal, greatly to their own advantage,
under the nominal supervision of the sedentary zillah judges. A reform,
inspired mainly by Munro, was introduced by Regulations ix and xi
of 1816. The general control was now vested in the collector as
magistrate. The principal executive officers were the tahsildars, under
the tide "heads of police", and all the members of their revenue
establishments, clerks and peons, were at their disposal for police
work. The prime agents of detection were the village watchers acting
under the village headmen and accountants. But time revealed
defects in this plan also. The superior revenue officers became more
immersed in their growing revenue duties ; opportunities for mischief
by underlings were doubled by their dual capacity. Crime, gang-
robbery in particular, reached alarming proportions in some places.
The report of the Torture Commission of 1855 rendered change
imperative. The commission found torture to be a "time-honoured
institution" and spoke of "that perfect but silent machinery which
combines the forces of revenue demands and police authority"; wit-
nesses did not hesitate to speak of the police as "the bane and pest
of society". The force was now reconstituted on English and Irish
lines. ^ Direct control by the district magistrate disappeared and the
connection with the Revenue Department was sundered. The ad-
ministration was vested in an inspector-general 2 assisted by deputies.
The village watcher was retained. Each district was supplied with
European officers as superintendents and assistants. This system has
stood the test of time, which is not to say that the personnel does not
admit of improvement.
In natural sequence we come to the jails. Such institutions had
been unknown before British rule, and for a long time afterwards any
strong building was deemed suitable for the purpose. In these the
death-rate generally exceeded 100 per mille.^ The rules of health
were not understood; floggings for breach of discipline were too
severe and frequent; still worse, perhaps, the system of paying daily
subsistence allow^ances to prisoners meant that catering was left to
jailors who made all they could out of it. These same officers had, in
practice, the whole administration in their hands, for, although the
zillah judge was charged with superintendence,* his occasional visits
had little effect. It was not until 1855 that an Inspector-General of
Prisons was appointed, and it was ten years later that the beneficial
change of appointing the civil surgeons to be superintendents was
* India Act XXIV of 1 859. The presidency town has been governed by a different series
of enactments.
* Called, at first, commissioner.
' Macleane, Manual of the Administration, vol. i, chap. iii.
* Reg. VI of 1802. Gf. India Act VII of 1843.
POLICE AND JAILS 57
carried out.^ A committee, appointed at the instance of Lord
Macaulay, had, in 1838, advised, among other things, the building
of central jails, but nothing was done in this direction until about
1857. A second committee, reporting in 1864, laid stress on this
matter and on ventilation, and thereafter there was much building.
To the new central jails European officers were appointed as super-
intendents and the civil surgeons were placed in medical charge.
Health was improved by the provision of fixed diet-scales in 1867;
behaviour, shortly afterwards, by a system of remissions. The mortality
in the triennium ending 186 1-2 averaged 81 'O per mille, in the
quinquennium ending 1884, 33-3, in the two years ending 1916-17,
1 1 '5. These figures form a sufficient comment on the earlier adminis-
tration.
The civil surgeons who have just been mentioned belonged to that
beneficent body the Indian Medical Service, which was organised in
1 786 as an establishment of surgeons and assistant surgeons under a
Hospital Board. That board was replaced in 1857 by a director-
general and other superintending officers, and in 1880 the Indian and
Army Medical Departments (the latter concerned with the European
soldiers) were put under a surgeon-general attached to the civil
government. The commissioned officers of the Indian Medical Service
who, when first associated with the civil administration, were styled
zillah surgeons, became later the civil surgeons. The report of the
royal commission of 1863 on the heavy mortality among English
troops in India led to the creation in Madras of a Sanitary Commission
which was soon replaced by a Sanitary Commissioner. That officer
was then associated with the civil administration and took over the
Vaccination Department which had been running independently
since 1805. In 1883 the civil surgeons were supplied with assistants
to enable them to tour and became the present district medical and
sanitary officers who, besides being the chief physicians and surgeons
of their districts, have administrative charge of the district jails and
medical charge of the central jails, and are advisory and adminis-
trative officers to the municipal councils and local boards to which,
since 1871, has appertained the general control of medical institutions,
vaccination and sanitation.
1 Act II of 1865.
CHAPTER IV
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
1818-1857
U NTIL the commencement of the nineteenth century there was
little or no increase in the territorial possessions of the Bombay
Government, and consequently no alteration of the system of adminis-
tration. Bankot was ceded by the Marathas in 1 755 in exchange for
Gheria (Vijayadrug), which had been taken from Angria by a naval
force consisting of vessels of both the Royal Navy and the Bombay
Marine. Broach, which was captured by assault in 1772, had to be
relinquished in 1779, and was not regained until 1803. The island of
Salsette, and Karanja, Elephanta, and Hog islands in Bombay
harbour, which had been transferred by Raghunatha Rao, the
pretender to the Peshwaship, were likewise relinquished in 1779, and
were not restored till the signing of the Treaty of Salbai in 1782.
These changes, though politically of importance, did not involve any
revision of the administrative arrangements, which had been applied
since early days to the Company's factories and settlements. In the
case of Surat, however, and the district surrounding it, the year 1 759
witnessed the introduction of certain changes which lasted until 1800,
when they were superseded by administrative arrangements based
on the model of the district administration in Bengal.
The presidency, in the year 1800, included the town and island of
Bombay, the islands in Bombay harbour, the island of Salsette, the
outlying station of Bankot (Fort Victoria) in the South Konkan, and
the town and district of Surat. The local governor and council passed
by the Regulating Act under the influence, and by the India Act under
the control, of the governor-general and council of Fort William.
Justice was administered by the Recorder's Court set up in 1798 to
supersede the existing Mayor's Court and Court of Quarter Sessions.
All British subjects resident within the territories subject to the
Bombay Government, as also those resident in the territories of native
princes in alliance with that government, were amenable to its juris-
diction. The Recorder's Court continued to function until 1823 when
it was superseded by a Supreme Court, composed of a chief judge and
two other judges, and modelled on the Supreme Court of Judicature
at Fort William.
In 1799 another development occurred. Ever since 1759 Surat,
though remaining under the nominal authority of the nawab, had
been in fact administered by one of the Company's servants, at first
styled " Chief for the Affairs of the British Nation and Gk)vernor of
TERRITORIAL DIVISIONS 59
the Moghul Castle and Fleet of Surat", and later called "lieutenant-
governor", subordinate to the governor and council in Bombay. In
1799 the last nominally independent nawab died. The Bombay
Government then arranged with his brother to assume the whole
administration of the town and district, and by a proclamation of the
governor of Bombay, 15 May, 1800, the district of Surat, as then
existing, was placed in charge of a collector and a judge and magis-
trate, one of whom, generally the judge, was also in political charge
of the titular nawab and the petty chiefs of the neighbourhood, as
agent to the governor of Bombay. ^ The same period witnessed also
the establishment at Surat of a sadr adalat, a court of circuit and
appeal, which ultimately exercised jurisdiction over all the Company's
territorial possessions in Gujarat. It is clear that the system of ad-
ministration thus introduced into Surat at the opening of the nine-
teenth century was borrowed directly from the system initiated in
Bengal by Hastings in 1772 and revised by Lord Cornwallis after
1786.
With the nineteenth century came a rapid territorial expansion.
First came cessions by Sindhia, the Peshwa, and the Gaekwar. And
then the final downfall of the Peshwa in 181 8 gave the Company an
enormous addition of territory, which included certain parts of
Gujarat, the whole of the Deccan, except the small kingdom reserved
for the raja of Satara and two parganas granted to the ruler of Kolhapur,
the whole of Khandesh, the district of Dharwar including Belgaum,
Ratnagiri, and Kolaba, with the exception of the Alibag taluka, which
lapsed to the Company in 1840. The present Nasik district was divided
between the collectorates of Khandesh and Ahmadnagar up to 1837,
when the portion included in the latter district was formed into a
sub-collectorate. It was finally constituted a separate district with an
enlarged area in 1869. Between 1818 and 1858 the presidency was
further extended by the lapse of certain native states, e.g. Mandvi in
Surat, and Satara; and various territorial readjustments took place,
such, for example, as the separation of the Ahmadabad and Kaira
districts in 1833, and of Belgaum and Dharwar in 1836, and the
conversion of Sholapur in 1838 into a collectorate, formed mainly of
villages ceded by the Nizam in 1822. In 1848 the Bijapur district,
which had formed part of the territory of the raja of Satara, lapsed
to the Company, and in 1853 and 1861 occurred the lease and final
transfer respectively by Sindhia of the Panch Mahals. More distant
acquisitions by conquest were those of Aden in 1839 and of Sind in
1847. In 1 86 1 North Kanara was transferred from the Madras
Presidency to Bombay.
At first the judicial and revenue administration of the Gujarat
districts acquired from the Gaekwar and the Peshwa between 1800
and 1803 ^^ entrusted to the agent of the governor-general at
* Imperial Gazetteer of Indian Bombay Presidency, i, 331.
6o DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
Baroda, who, like the resident at Poona in regard to the Deccan,
supervised the affairs of North Gujarat, so far as they concerned the
Company and its relations with the native powers. In 1805 the
resident's responsibility ceased, and these ceded areas were placed in
charge of a collector armed with powers similar to those possessed by
the collectors in Bengal.
The great increase of territory which accrued from the conquest or
annexation of the Peshwa's possessions in 181 8 necessarily involved
the establishment of a more extensive administrative system. The
newly acquired territories were divided into districts, organised and
managed on the lines adopted in Bengal. In two respects, however,
the Bombay arrangements differed from the Bengal system : first, no
Board of Revenue was created ; and secondly, the districts were re-
stricted in size, so as to allow of their being more easily administered
than was the case with the large and unwieldy districts of Bengal.
The task of introducing order into the conquered area was by no
means easy. In Gujarat the intermingling of the Company's pos-
sessions with the territories of the Gaekwar, nawab of Cambay, and
the unsettled tributary land-holders of Kathiawar and Mahi Kantha,
the restlessness of the Girasias and Mewasis within the British sphere of
jurisdiction, and the turbulent character of a considerable portion of
the population, offered formidable obstacles, which were overcome
mainly by caution and good temper on the part of the Company's
officers. Conspicuous among the latter were Colonel Walker and his
assistants, who had charge of the area which developed in 181 8 into
the two collectorates of Ahmadabad and Kaira.^
Judicial regulations were introduced early and gradually made their
influence felt. For the purpose of revenue collection the Maratha
practice of farming out the districts to the desais, and subsequently to
the patels of the villages, was adopted for the first few years. Under
this system the collector or his subordinate mamlatdar or kamavisdar
had to make the best bargain he could with the desai for the annual
revenue, and provided that the amount promised was duly realised,
he did not concern himself with the methods of the desais and
village officers, or with the manner in which the government dues
were obtained from the peasantry. After 181 6, however, the ryotwari
system was gradually re-introduced, and the talati or village ac-
countant, who was appointed directly by the Bombay Government,
superseded the desai and the patel. At the outset the position of the
mamlatdar or kamavisdar in Gujarat was not wholly satisfactory. Though
he was the collector's principal subordinate and the chief native
official of the district for revenue and police matters, he was poorly
paid and w2ls also subjected to much expense by an order requiring
him, in his capacity of native police official, to attend the sessions. He
* Minute of governor of Bombay, 6 April, 1 82 1 (Appendix to Report of Select Committee
on Affairs of East India Company, 1 832) .
EARLY ORGANISATION 6i
was on this account frequently absent from the district at times when
his revenue duties demanded his presence on the spot. These diffi-
culties, however, were gradually obviated after the re-introduction of
the ryotwari system, which brought the villages into direct contact
with the officers of government, substituted for the former corrupt
village accountants persons appointed direct by the government, and
enabled the authorities in consequence to increase the revenue and
distribute it more equally. There was better management and fuller
assertion of the public rights, due largely to the comparatively small
size of the districts, which admitted of adequate superintendence by
the collector, and also to the actual manner in which the system was
introduced, first by a commissioner, whose business was to enquire
rather than to innovate, and secondly by collectors trained in his
methods and acquainted with the actual state of everything which
they were called on to improve.^
The settlement of the Deccan and Khandesh was entrusted to the
capable hands of Mountstuart Elphinstone. So far as the revenue
system was concerned, his main object was to preserve as far as
possible unimpaired the practice of the Maratha Government, subject,
however, to the abolition of the system of farming the revenue, to the
levy of assessment according to the area actually cultivated, and to
the imposition of no new taxes. Old taxes were for the time being
retained, except where they were manifestly unjust or oppressive. The
country, which in the days of the Peshwa had been divided up among
many mamlatdars and kamavisdars, whose powers and territorial juris-
diction varied greatly in extent, was placed under five principal
officers, namely the collectors of Khandesh, Poona, Ahmadnagar, and
the Carnatic, and the political agent at Satara. Each of these
officials resided within the limits of his charge and devoted his whole
time to its affairs. The straggling revenue areas of Maratha days were
formed into compact districts, each yielding from Rs. 50,000 to
Rs. 70,000 annually; and each was placed in charge of a mamlatdar
on a fixed monthly salary of Rs. 70 to Rs. 150, with limited powers,
who was bound to reside within the limits of his charge and was in
all matters subordinate to one of the principal English officers or
collectors.
The duties of the mamlatdar consisted in supervising the collection
of the revenue, managing the police establishment, and receiving
civil and criminal complaints, of which the former were referred by
him to panchayats and the latter to the collector. To assist him in these
duties, he was furnished with a staff consisting of a sheristadar or
record-keeper on Rs. 30 to Rs. 40 a month, an accountant and sub-
^ Letter from M. Elphinstone, i6 August, 1832 (Minutes of Evidence before Select
Committee on Affairs of East India Company, Rev. in, 1832) ; Minute, 6 April, 1821, by
governor of Bombay on Ahmadabad and Kaira (Appendix, Report of Select Committee
(Parliamentary), 1832).
62 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
ordinate clerks. At first the Bombay Government found some diffi-
culty in securing mamlatdars of the right type. In Poona and Satara
they were chiefly respectable servants of the former government; in
Khandesh, which had been wasted and depopulated, men had to be
introduced from the Nizam's dominions or from Hindustan ; while a
few men were borrowed from Madras to act as a check upon the
Deccan officials. Below the mamlatdar was the patel, who was re-
sponsible, together with the kulkami, for the revenue and police
administration of the village. His powers were pro tanto reduced by
the closer supervision exercised by the mamlatdar under the British
system, while his emoluments were lessened by the reduction or
abolition of the Maratha tax known as sadar warid patti.
The sheet-anchor of the district finances was the land-revenue,
other sources of income being customs (jakat), excise [abkari)^ fines
paid on succession to property {nazar), fees paid for pasturage by
nomad shepherds, and fees paid for permits to cut wood in govern-
ment forests. The foundation of the agricultural assessment was the
amount paid by each village in times when the people considered
themselves to have been well governed. From this amount deductions
were made for diminution of cultivation or for special reasons, and
the final amount payable was apportioned among the ryots or agri-
cultural population by the village officers. The chauth and babti of
Maratha days were abolished, as also were arbitrary imposts like the
jasti patti. Speaking generally, the assessments were made lighter,
more definite, and more uniform; more liberal advances were made
to the cultivator for land improvement or to assist him in seasons of
scarcity; the practice of bringing false charges against him as a pretext
for extorting larger contributions was sternly and actively prohibited.
Owing to the difficulty of framing a tariff and to the collectors*
absorption in revenue and magisterial duties, the customs were
farmed for the first few years. The excise revenue, which yielded less
than £1000 annually, was maintained at a low figure, as in the
Peshwa's days, by express prohibition in Poona and the active dis-
couragement of drinking elsewhere. Similarly, until the currency
system was stabilised, the mint was farmed to a contractor. The salt-
tax was unknown at the commencement of the nineteenth century,
though the manufacture of salt was carried on in the coUectorate of
Bombay by both government and private persons, and in other dis-
tricts by various methods, the revenue so derived being recovered in
the shape of rent, customs-duty, or duty on sales. In 1837 an act was
passed establishing a salt excise-duty, whereupon all salt-works outside
the island of Bombay were placed in charge of a Collector of Conti-
nental Customs and Excise, and those in Bombay were supervised by
the Collector of Land Revenue at the presidency. These two officials
were responsible for the management and collection of the tax; but
whereas the collector of Bombay had no separate staflf for the pur-
TAXATION AND JUSTICE 63
poses of the salt revenue the Collector of Continental Customs was
assisted by a deputy-collector and five assistant collectors. These
arrangements continued until 1854, when the charge of all sea and
land customs and of the salt excise of the whole presidency was trans-
ferred to a commissioner, assisted by a European staff of three deputy-
commissioners and ten uncovenanted assistants, and by an Indian
staff at each of the chief salt-works.
In regard to the administration of civil and criminal justice, the
position in the year 181 2-13 may be briefly described, before pro-
ceeding to later developments. At that date the possessions of the
Bombay Government in Gujarat included the towns of Broach,
Kaira and Surat. In each of those towns was an officer combining
the functions of criminal judge and magistrate, with an assistant for
magisterial duties. Above them was a sadr adalat, consisting of three
judges, which served as a court of circuit and appeal, not only for the
three above-mentioned places in Gujarat, but also for Salsette, ad-
joining Bombay Island, which was administered by a single judge.
For the hearing and disposal of civil causes, a native official, styled
sadr amin, was appointed to each of the three Gujarat towns and
Salsette, and an appeal from the decisions of these functionaries also
lay to the sadr adalat in Surat. In Bombay, as previously mentioned,
the superior court at this date was that of the recorder, which exercised
both civil and criminal jurisdiction, while the lower courts were, for
civil suits, the Small Causes Court for the recovery of debts not
exceeding Rs. 175, which was established in 1799, and, for criminal
cases, the courts of the senior, second and third magistrates of police,^
which were established by Rule, Ordinance and Regulation i of 181 2,
and the Court of Petty Sessions, which was opened in the same year.^
The development which took place in consequence of the acquisi-
tions and annexations of 181 8 and following years will be apparent
from a survey of the provincial judicial arrangements of the year
1828-9. By that date the system of combining judicial and magis-
terial powers in one individual had been abolished, and magisterial
jurisdiction, coupled with control of the police, had been vested in
the collector of the district. As remarked by Sir John Malcolm, sound
reasons existed for combining magisterial with revenue or territorial
jurisdiction ; for under the actual form of administration introduced
after 1818, the collector alone was in the position to possess full in-
formation of the state of the district subject to his authority and of the
character and condition of its inhabitants. ^ On the other hand the
presidency was handicapped by two confficting systems of judicature,
represented by the existence in Bombay of the Supreme or King's
Court, which superseded the Recorder's Court in 1823, and the
* The third magistrate was not actually appointed till 1830.
* S. M. Edwardes, The Bombay City Police, pp. 25 sqq.; Bombay City Gazetteer, n, 220 sgq.
* Minute by Sir J. Malcolm, 10 November, 1830 {Apf)endix, Report of Select Committee
(Judicial), 1832).
64 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
Company's courts, known as the sadr diwani adalat and the sadr
faujdari adalat, which had been transferred from Surat to the capital
of the presidency in 1827, towards the close of the governorship of
Mountstuart Elphinstone. The Supreme Court had authority by
letters patent to exercise civil, criminal, equity, admiralty and eccle-
siastical jurisdiction within the island of Bombay and the factories
subordinate thereto, and was invested with jurisdiction similar to that
of the King's Bench in England. The adalats, on the other hand,
which were wholly independent of the Supreme Court, superintended
the administration of justice in all places outside the limits of Bombay
Island. The sadr diwani adalat, consistingof four judges, a "register"
and an assistant register, had no original jurisdiction, but its de-
cisions were final except in suits relating to property worth more than
Rs. 10,000, when an appeal lay to the King in Council; while the
sadr faujdari adalat, consisting of the junior member of council as
chief judge and three puisne judges, superintended all criminal and
police matters in the districts and had power to revise all trials held
by lower courts outside the limits of Bombay Island. The jury-system
was confined to the jurisdictional limits of the Supreme Court.
In Gujarat, under the jurisdiction of the sadr adalat, was a pro-
vincial court of appeal and circuit, stationed at Surat and composed
of three judges. This court served as a civil court of appeal, while one
of the judges attached to it held a sessions every six months at Surat
and other centres. Sentences of death, transportation, or imprison-
ment for life passed by this court were subject to confirmation by the
sadr faujdari adalat. The court was finally abolished in 1830. In each
of the districts of Broach, Surat and Ahmadabad-Kaira^ was stationed
a judge for both civil and criminal work, aided by an assistant judge
or register, who decided such cases as the judge made over to him.
Subordinate to the judge for the purposes of civil justice, there
were in each district several munsiffs and in each headquarters town
one or more sadr amins, who were remunerated by fees. In 1828-9
the Bombay Presidency contained four sadr amins and seventy-nine
munsiffs or native commissioners, from whose decisions an appeal lay
successively to the district judge, to the court of appeal and circuit,
and finally to the sadr diwani adalat. In criminal cases the district
judge could award sentences of solitary imprisonment for six months,
imprisonment with hard labour for seven years, flogging, public dis-
grace, fine and personal restraint, subject to the proviso that in all
cases where a sentence of more than two years' imprisonment was
imposed, a reference had to be made to the court of circuit. Magis-
terial powers were vested in the collectors of the four districts,
Ahmadabad, Kaira, Broach and Surat, and extended to sentences of
fine, simple imprisonment for not more than two months, flogging
^ For judicial purposes this area was treated as a single district, but as two districts for
revenue and magisterial work.
JUDICIAL ORGANISATION 65
not in excess of thirty stripes, and personal restraint. The native
district police officers and the village police officers, subordinate to
the collectors, also possessed limited powers of punishment in trivial
cases. The former could impose fines not exceeding Rs. 5, or sentence
delinquents to confinement for not more than eight days or to a period
of not more than twelve hours in the stocks ; while the latter could
punish petty cases of assault and abuse by confinement in the village
chauki for not more than twenty-four hours. ^
The Konkan, divided for administrative purposes into North and
South, was judicially administered on the same lines as Gujarat,
except that in both portions the criminal sessions were held by one
of the judges of the sadr faujdari adalat, while in civil matters there
was no intermediate court of appeal, as in Gujarat, between the
district (zillah) judge and the sadr diwani adalat in Bombay. Both
the judges of the North and South Konkan had assistants, to whom
they delegated such cases as they thought fit.^
The Deccan at this date (1828-9) was composed of three col-
lectorates — Poona including Sholapur, Ahmadnagar and Khandesh.
The policy of Mountstuart Elphinstone, who was appointed com-
missioner for the settlement of the Deccan in 181 7 and became
governor of Bombay two years later, was to interfere as little as possible
with the system which he found existing in the conquered territory,
and at the outset, except for modifications of procedure, the Maratha
arrangements for civil justice were maintained more or less unaltered.
All complaints that could not be amicably settled were referred in the
first instance to the collector, who usually directed the mamlatdar to
enquire into the facts and grant dipanchayat. Occasionally the collector
or his assistant would hear and decide a case; but his function was
generally limited to granting a new panchayat in cases where a decision
appeared to be marked by injustice or to be due to corruption. In
the course of his tours through his charge, the collector was bound to
give audience to all classes for two hours daily, receive oral complaints,
and revise the decisions of the mamlatdar, if this appeared necessary.
In the large towns like Poona, civil justice was in the hands ofamins,
who were empowered to grant panchayats and try cases referred to them
by the collector, whenever both parties consented to this mode of
adjustment.
In the sphere of criminal justice Elphinstone abolished the pateVs
punitive powers, and the mamlatdar^ s powers were limited to sentences
of fine not exceeding Rs. 2, and of confinement for twenty-four hours.
All other criminal powers were vested in the collector, who corre-
sponded in this respect to the sarsubehdar under the Maratha govern-
ment. In practice a prisoner was formally and publicly brought to
* Minute of John Bax on Judicial and Revenue system of Bombay, i6 June, 1829
(General Appendix, Report of Select Committee (Parliamentary), 1832).
2 Idem, pp. 12^ sqq.
c H I VI «;
66 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
trial before the collector. If found guilty, a sastri was called upon to
declare the penalty according to Hindu law, which, if considered
excessive according to European standards, was modified, and if light,
was accepted by the collector. In Khandesh a kind of jury was
assembled, which questioned witnesses and pronounced on the guilt
of the accused ; while in Satara the political agent summoned re-
spectable residents to serve as assessors at the trial. In all cases native
exponents of the Hindu law were present in court, and where capital
sentences or heavy punishment were involved, the collector had to
report his decision for confirmation to the commissioner. ^
This system was shortly afterwards superseded by arrangements
resembling, though not absolutely identical with, those followed in
Gujarat. Thus in 1828-9 the Deccan districts were administered for
judicial purposes by two district judges, one for Poona and Sholapur,
and the other for Ahmadnagar and Khandesh. Each judge had an
assistant, one being stationed in Sholapur and the other in Dhulia,
who were vested with limited penal powers and were bound to refer
all matters of importance to their superiors. Subject to the general
authority of the sadr faujdari adalat in Bombay, the two judges held
regular criminal sessions at Poona and Ahmadnagar, while their
decisions in civil suits were subject to appeal to the sadr diwani adalat.
The magisterial powers of the collector and his subordinates were the
same as in Gujarat, the assistant collector being empowered to try
such cases as the collector delegated to him, subject to the overriding
powers of the latter in appeal. 2
The Carnatic or Southern Maratha country, consisting of Dharwar
and Belgaum, was administered on rather different lines, as the
Bombay Regulations, which were published in 1827 and applied to
the rest of the presidency, were not formally applied to this area till
1830. The collector for the time being, aided by assistants and a regis-
trar, exercised all the civil and criminal functions which elsewhere
were performed by the separate departments of district judge, criminal
judge and magistrate. Even after the application of the regulations
in 1830, the oflftces of political agent, collector, judge and sessions judge
were still united in one individual, while the assistant judge at
Dharwar was vested with the powers of an assistant at detached
stations (e.g. Dhulia) in other parts of the presidency. The civil and
criminal work of the district was, however, placed under the general
supervision of the sadr adalat, the criminal side of which served, as
in the case of the Konkan, as a court of circuit. This difference of
treatment probably was due to the fact that the management of the
Southern Maratha country after 18 13 was conducted mainly by
officers of the Madras Presidency, notwithstanding that the area con-
cerned was nominally under the authority of Bombay. The district of
* M. Elphinstone, Report on the Territories conquered from the Peshwa, Calcutta, 1821.
• Report, Select Committee on Affairs of East India Company, 1832.
REFORMS OF 1830 67
Dharwar, including Belgaum, was permanently assigned to Bombay
in 1830, when the Bombay regulations were formally applied to it.
The judicial system in 1828-9, outlined above, had certain pro-
minent defects, which may be summarised as absence of superin-
tendence and supervision in the Deccan, and lack of homogeneity in
the arrangements followed in the four main divisions of the presidency,
viz. Gujarat, the Deccan, the Konkan and the Garnatic. A revision
of the system, however, occurred in 1830, which resulted in the wider
employment of Indians in the administration of civil law and in the
duties of the English civil servant being limited to a greater extent
than previously to the control and supervision of the inferior agents
of government. By the end of that year almost all original civil suits
had been made over for trial to natives of India, and special judicial
commissioners were appointed for Gujarat and the Deccan, who
toured throughout those areas and heard all complaints in regard
to the administration of justice. Simultaneously the magisterial
powers of the collector, assistant collector, and mamlatdar were ex-
tended, and the collector, as chief revenue official of the district, was
also empowered to take civil cognisance of suits relating to land and
to decide claims and disputes regarding ownership, etc., subject to an
appeal to the district judge.
For the purposes of the ordinary revenue and judicial administra-
tion of the districts outside the town and island of Bombay, the civil
service cadre in 1828-9 was composed of six district judges, ten
assistant district judges, ten collectors with magisterial powers, one
sub-collector and magistrate, ten assistant collectors, seventy-nine
^^ koomashdars^^ (i.e. kamavisdars or mamlatdars), four sadr amins, and
seventy-nine munsiffs. At headquarters in Bombay were the chief
judge and three puisne judges of the sadr adalat, a registrar, two
secretaries and one deputy-secretary to government, an accountant-
general, a sub-treasurer, a mint master and civil auditor, and a post-
master-general. The Bombay Government consisted of the governor
and three members of council, of whom one was usually the com-
mander-in-chief of the Bombay army and the other two were civil
servants of more than ten years' standing.^
By an act of 1807 the governor and council had been given the same
power of making regulations, subject to approval by the Supreme and
the Recorder's Courts, as had previously been vested in the Bengal
Government, and the same power of appointing justices of the peace.
By 1833 Bombay possessed a large code of regulations, commencing
with Mountstuart Elphinstone's revised code of 1827, which embodied
the results of twenty-eight years' previous legislation. This code had
force and validity throughout the whole presidency, beyond the
jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
As regards other departments of the Bombay administration at this
^ Report, Select Committee on Affairs of East India Company, 1832.
5-2
68 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
date (1830) mention has already been made of the salt-revenue
arrangements. The sea-customs administration was in charge of the
Collector of Land Revenue in Bombay and of a custom-master and
his deputy in Gujarat. A custom-master stationed in Salsette super-
vised the customs of the two divisions of the Konkan, and in order to
save the expense of establishments both the Gujarat and the Konkan
customs were farmed out at this date. The post-office was still in its
infancy and was little used by the Indian public. The mail was carried
by runners; and government dispatches, which were conveyed free,
were said in 1832 to exceed in bulk all private communications sent
by post. ^ This is hardly surprising, when one remembers that it cost
a rupee to send a letter from Bombay to Calcutta. It was not until
the governor-generalship of Lord Dalhousie that the old inefficient
postal arrangements were swept away and a uniform half-anna postal
rate was introduced.
The educational administration of the Bombay Government at the
opening of the nineteenth century was restricted to the grant of
financial and moral support to the Bombay Education Society. In
1822 this society decided to confine its activities to the education of
European and Eurasian children, and thus indirectly gave birth to
the Bombay Native Education Society, which became merged in 1840
in a Board of Education. From that year till 1855 this society shared
with various English and American missionary bodies the whole
burden of the educational administration. It opened primary schools
in the Konkan, Deccan, and Gujarat and trained masters to staff them.
The experiment of placing these schools under the control of the
collectors of the districts was tried in 1832, but proved unsatisfactory;
and as it appeared likely that the management of the schools would
suffer in the absence of a special supervising agency, a Board of
Education was established in 1840, composed of a president and three
European members nominated by the Bombay Government and three
Indian members appointed by the Native Education Society. From
1840 to 1855 this board directed the educational administration of
the presidency, which was divided for this purpose into three divisions,
each under a European inspector and an Indian assistant. In 1852 the
Bombay Government increased its subsidy to the board from i J to
2 J lakhs of rupees, whereupon the latter undertook to open a school
in any village of the presidency, provided that the inhabitants were
prepared to pay half the salary of the master and to provide a school-
room and books. The opening and maintenance of girls' schools was
still left to private enterprise; but with that exception the system
founded by the board anticipated in many respects the principles laid
down in the famous dispatch of the court of directors in 1854. It had
prepared the way for a university by establishing institutions for the
teaching of literature, law, medicine, and engineering, and had
* Appendix to Report, Select Committee on Affairs of East India Company, 1832.
t
EDUCATION AND POLICE 69
introduced a system of primary schools, administered by the govern-
ment, but mainly supported by the people themselves. These schools,
indeed, formed the germ of the later Local Fund school system.^
Finally, in 1855, after receipt of orders from the governor-general
in council on the directors' dispatch of 1854, the department of
Public Instruction was formed with a full staff of educational and
deputy educational inspectors. The further progress of the educational
administration belongs to the period following the Mutiny and the
assumption by the crown of full responsibility for the government of
India.
Before dealing with the administrative changes which marked the
second half of the nineteenth century, the police system of the pre-
sidency prior to 1858 deserves brief notice. As regards the town and
island of Bombay, where the police arrangements differed ab initio
from those prevailing in the rest of the presidency, it has already been
stated that the earliest force for watch-and-ward was a militia, re-
cruited about 1673 as a supplement to the regular garrison and
composed chiefly of Bhandaris and other Hindus of lower caste. This
force was commanded by native officers (subehdars) , who were posted
at the more important points in the island. In 1771 this militia was
relieved of military duties and formed into night patrols; but it
proved so ineffective in preventing crime that it was reorganised in
1779 and placed under the control of a European officer, styled first
"lieutenant", then "Deputy of Police", and finally, in 1793, "Super-
intendent of Police". The force at this date was composed of twenty-
eight European constables and 130 nsitive peons. The continuance of
serious crime and the gross inefficiency of this force led to the publi-
cation in 18 1 2 of a regulation, vesting the control of police matters
in three Magistrates of Police, assisted by a "Deputy of Police and
Head Constable" as executive head of the force. This arrangement
likewise produced little or no amelioration of conditions, despite a
gradual increase in the numerical strength of the police force, which
was controlled from 1835 to 1855 by a succession of junior officers
chosen from the Company's military establishment. These officers,
who were styled "Superintendents", possessed little or no aptitude
for police work, were poorly paid for their services, and had no real
encouragement to make their mark in civil employ. By 1855 the
public outcry against police inefficiency and corruption had become
so insistent, that Lord Elphinstone's government was obliged to hold
an enquiry; and, after drastic punishment of the offenders, a new act
(XIII of 1856) was passed for the future constitution and regulation
of the urban force. A district police officer, of unusual capability, was
appointed superintendent of the force; and he managed by 1865,
when the title of the appointment was changed to that of Commis-
sioner of Police, to bring crime under control and to lay the founda-
^ Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island, iii, 103 sqq.
70 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
tions of the efficient organisation now known as the Bombay City
Police. 1
The modern Bombay district police includes, as an essential part
of its organisation, the ancient institution of the village watch, which
consists of^ the patel, who is responsible for the police of his village, and
the village watchman, whose duty it is to keep watch at night, find
out arrivals and departures, watch all strangers, and report all sus-
picious persons to the patel. Under native rule the patel was in the
position of a police magistrate, and the watchman, who worked under
his orders, was bound to know the character of every man in the
village. When a theft occurred within village bounds, it was the
watchman's business to find the thief
He was enabled to do this by his early habits of inquisitiveness and observation,
as well as by the nature of his allowance, which, being partly a small share of the
grain and similar property belonging to each house, required him to be always on
the watch to ascertain his fees, and always in motion to gather them. On the
occurrence of a theft or robbery, he would often track the thief by his footsteps,
and if he did this to another village, so as to satisfy the watchman there, or if he
otherwise traced the property to an adjoining village, his responsibility ended. It
then became the duty of the watchman of the new village to take up the pursuit.
The last village to which the thief had been clearly traced became answerable for
the property stolen, which would otherwise have had to be accounted for by the
village in which the robbery was committed. The watchman was expected to con-
tribute as much as his means allowed to the value of the goods stolen, and the
balance was levied on the whole village. Only in particular cases was restoration
of the full value of the property insisted upon. A fine was usually levied ; and neglect
or connivance was punished by transferring the grant or inam of the patel or the
watchman to his nearest relative, by fine, by imprisonment in irons, or by severe
corporal punishment.^
This responsibility was necessary, as, after the decline of the Moghul
power, the old police system fell into great disorder. Petty chiefs and
zamindars, no longer fearing reprisals from above, took to ravaging
and plundering their neighbours' lands, and their example was
folld'wed by the village police. Most of the latter became thieves
themselves, and many of the patels harboured criminals and connived
at crime. Under the rule of the first six Peshwas, the village police
were under the control of the mamlatdar or kamavisdar of the division
or district; but after the accession of the last Peshwa, Baji Rao II,
a new class of police inspector, styled tapasnavis, was created for the
purpose of criminal investigation. These officials, who were inde-
pendent of the mamlatdar, proved for the most part inefficient and
almost invariably corrupt.
When the East India Company first addressed itself to the task of
administering the presidency, it retained the old village police system,
but reformed it to the extent of transferring all police authority to the
collector and magistrate and dividing each district into small police-
circles, each of which was in charge of a daroga or head constable. The
* S. M. Edwardes, The Bombay City Police, pp. 1-53.
* Imperial Gazetteer of Indian Provincial Series, Bombay Presidency, i, 119.
RURAL POLICE 71
daroga was in command of about thirty armed men and also exercised
authority over the village police. This system, which disregarded the
patel and converted the watchman from a village servant into an ill-
paid and disreputable subordinate of the daroga, proved an expensive
failure and was abolished in 18 14 on the representations of Mount-
stuart Elphinstone and Munro. When, therefore, he commenced the
task of settling the Deccan in 181 8, Elphinstone insisted upon keeping
the police powers of the mamlatdar and the patel as far as possible
unimpaired, though all superior powers and authority were vested in
the collector. The mamlatdar, whose duty it was to see that the villages
acted in concert and with activity, was permitted, as previously, the
use ofsilahdars (auxiliary horse) and sihbandis (militia) , with the double
object of strengthening his position in keeping the peace and of pro-
viding employment for the idle and needy. The practice of levying
the value of property stolen was also retained for a time in a modified
form calculated to obviate undue hardship. But the power of the
mamlatdar and the patel to confine suspects for an unlimited period was
abolished ; and, in general, the whole district and village system was
improved by the closer and more constant supervision exercised by
the European collector.^
The indigenous village agency controlled by the collector and
magistrate, which lasted until 1848, was soon found inadequate for
the miscellaneous duties imposed upon the district police agency,
such, for example, as guard duty and escort duty. Moreover, it was
incapable of dealing effectively with popular outbreaks and dis-
turbances. Consequently the Bombay Government was obliged to
augment the force in charge of the collector by additional corps
commanded by military officers ; and it was from these corps, raised
from time to time in emergencies, that the semi-military district
police of modern times originated. Among the most noteworthy of
these auxiliary police-forces were the Khandesh Bhil corps, raised and
trained by Outram between 1825 ^^^ 1830 J the Ahmadnagar police
corps, established by Sir John Malcolm's order in 1828, which did
good service in the Ramosi rising of 1826-32 ; the Ratnagiri Rangers,
formed in 1830 to oppose raids of Ramosis; the Thana Rangers and
Ghat light infantry, established in 1833; the Surat Sihbandis, formed
in 1834 on the model of the Thana corps; and the Gujarat Cooly
(Koti) corps, which was raised by Lieutenant Leckie in 1838. Down
to the year 1852, these corps took no part in ordinary police work,
being confined in times of peace to the supply of escorts and treasury-
guards, and in times of disturbance to the restoration and main-
tenance of peace by force of arms.
In 1848 the governor of Bombay, Sir G. Clerk, paid a visit to the
recently conquered province of Sind, and there found that Sir Charles
Napier had organised, on the model of the Irish constabulary, a new
* Imperial Gazetteer (1907), vol. iv; Mountstuart Elphinstone, Report on the Territories
conquered from the Peshwa; J. S. Cotton, Mountstuart Elphinstone.
72 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
police system, the salient features of which were its separation from
the revenue administration, the severance of police and magisterial
functions, and a considerable standard of discipline. It appeared to
the governor decidedly superior in its working to the system pre-
vaiUng in the rest of the presidency, which was frequently denounced
between 1825 and 1832, and in later years, as productive of corruption
and inefficiency. Accordingly, in 1852 the arrangements prevaiUng
in Sind were extended to the rest of the presidency; the commandants
of the various police corps were appointed "district superintendents of
police"; and, subject to the general control of the collector as district
magistrate, they took over all executive police work from the revenue
authorities. This was followed in 1855 by the appointment of a com-
missioner of police for the whole presidency; but in response to
representations from the collectors, this post was permitted to lapse
on the retirement of the incumbent in i860, and the general super-
intendence of the district police was then entrusted to the two revenue
commissioners of the presidency. In the same year a commission was
appointed to enquire into police administration and recommended the
establishment of a well-organised and purely civil constabulary, super-
vised by European officers and charged with all civil police duties,
including the supply of guards and escorts. The village police were to
be retained on the existing footing and brought into direct relation-
ship with the civil constabulary. These recommendations were
eventually embodied in the District Police Act of 1867, which re-
mained in force until 1 890, when it was superseded by a new act. The
latter act was extended to Sind in 1902. It only remains to remark
that the experiment of placing the general superintendence of the
police administration in the hands of the revenue commissioners
proved unsuccessful, as these officials, even when their number was
increased to three after i860, were far too busy to supervise effectively
the work of the police; and ultimately in the year 1885 the adminis-
trative control of the district police of the presidency, excluding Sind,
was vested in a single official styled " the Inspector-General of Police ".
In the year 1855-6, just prior to the Mutiny, the Bombay Presidency
was divided for judicial purposes into eight districts (zillahs), and for
revenue purposes into thirteen collectorates, exclusive of the island of
Bombay. The total number of judicial officers was: three judges of
the sadr adalat, exercising both civil (diwani) and criminal (faujdari)
jurisdiction ; eight district and sessions judges ; three senior assistant
judges at detached stations, who were usually invested with the same
powers in routine matters as a district and sessions judge ; six assistant
district and sessions judges; seven principal sadr aminSy whose juris-
diction was limited to civil suits of Rs. 10,000; thirteen sadr amins,
who could try original suits involving sums of Rs. 5000 or less ; and
seventy-three munsiffs. A reform of the official estabUshments of these
native judges was carried out during the year mentioned above, and
as a result the subordinates of the native courts, who previously had
ADMINISTRATION IN SIND 73
been mere dependents of the native judges, paid by them and liable
to dismissal at their pleasure, became servants of the state, paid by
the Bombay Government and looking to the latter for employment
and promotion. Magisterial work was performed by the collector and
his assistants, in their respective capacities of district and assistant
magistrates, both being empowered to award sentences of imprison-
ment, with hard labour, not exceeding one year. All sentences,
however, of more than three months' imprisonment by an assistant
magistrate required the confirmation of the district authority.
The administrative arrangements established in Sind, in 1847,
differed in several respects from those of the rest of the Bombay
Presidency. The head of the local executive administration in all its
branches was the Commissioner in Sind, and the province was divided
into three collectorates — Karachi, Hyderabad and Shikarpur, and
two small independent revenue charges — -the North-Western Frontier
and the Nagar Parkar district. Like the collectors in other parts of
the presidency, the collectors in Sind possessed magisterial powers;
but they differed from the former in presiding also over the adminis-
tration of justice in the civil and criminal courts. They were assisted
by deputy-collectors in charge of the subdivisions of the several
collectorates, while the North-Western Frontier districts were under
a Political Superintendent, who was also military commandant, aided
by an assistant superintendent, whose powers and duties corresponded
to those of the deputy-collector in the other districts. The Thar and
Parkar district was managed until 1 856 by the assistant political agent
in Gutch, and afterwards by an officer corresponding to the collector.
For a few years after the conquest the revenue in Sind was collected
in grain by actual division of the crop, the grain being then sold by
the government at auction for artificially high prices. The natural
tone of the market was seriously upset by this practice and was further
disorganised by the habit of drawing grain for the troops at nominal
prices from the government grain stores. By 1855-6, however, this
objectionable system had been superseded in several districts by cash
assessments, which were gradually adopted throughout the whole of
Sind. The rules under which the revenues of that province were at
this date collected were not defined by law, as in other parts of the
presidency, and were determined by the commissioner in Sind with
the approval and sanction of the Bombay Government.^
The jail system of the presidency had formed the subject of a
special enquiry as early as 1 834, when regulations were issued for the
improvement of prison discipline. The early Indian jail system was
justly described as insanitary, demoralising, and non-deterrent, and
was responsible for the appointment in 1838 of a commission which
recommended radical reforms. Financial stringency, however, pre-
vented these being carried out, and no appreciable change for the
better took place until the appointment in 1855 of an Inspector-
^ Report on the Administration of Public Affairs in the Bombay Presidency for 1855-6.
74 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
General of Prisons in each presidency and the psissing of Act VIII of
1856, which reheved the judges of the sadr faujdari adalat from the
charge of jails. These measures led directly to improvements in jail
buildings and in the discipline and health of prisoners. Subsequent
progress in this department belongs to the period succeeding the
appointment of a second Prisons Commission in 1864.
The history of the pre-Mutiny period of the administration involves
a brief reference to the Public Works, and the Ecclesiastical and
Medical Departments. For several years the administration of the
former was carried on under great disadvantages, owing to the want
of experienced civil engineers. The court of directors endeavoured to
relieve the difficulty by occasionally sending to Bombay a batch of
men "with more or less experience in civil engineering", and at times,
e.g. in 1855, the Bombay Government was able to secure in the
country the services of a few professionally educated civil engineers.
But the whole agency at their disposal was "lamentably small", and
the department was not organised on a satisfactory basis until after
the assumption of direct authority by the crown. ^ The Ecclesiastical
Department owed its origin to the determination of the directors in
early factory days to provide for the spiritual needs of their servants
in India ; and as the number of these and of the European troops
increased, the ecclesiastical establishment likewise expanded, until in
1855-6 the number of clergy appointed for the Bombay diocese
amounted to thirty-two. Subject to the general control of the govern-
ment, the chaplains were directly subordinate to the bishop of the see,
the first bishop of Bombay, Dr Carr, having been installed in 1838.^
The medical administration was likewise evolved from the system
adopted in early days by the East India Company of sending
" chirurgeons " from England for the care of their servants and troops
in the "factories" and on the vessels trading with the East. The
surgeons serving on the Company's Indiamen were often utilised
in emergencies in India, as for example during the Maratha War
of 1780, and to fill vacancies among their professional brethren
attached to the factories and out-stations. The formation of these
scattered medical officers in India into a single body, the Indian
Medical Service, dates roughly from 1 764, the service being divided
two years later (1766) into two branches, military and civil. Those
in the latter branch were regarded as primarily army medical officers,
lent temporarily for civil duties — an arrangement which was con-
firmed in 1788 during the governor-generalship of Lord Cornwallis.
The most important administrative change prior to the Mutiny con-
sisted in throwing open the service to Indians in 1853 through the
medium of competitive examinations, of which the first was held in
1855-
^ Rep>ort on the Administration of Public Affairs in the Bombay Presidency for 1 855-6.
* Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island^ 111, 245.
CHAPTER V
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED
PROVINCES, CENTRAL PROVINCES, AND PANJAB
1818-1857
,/\ VERY brief chronological resume of the successive territorial
acquisitions which in less than a century extended the political
responsibilities of the East India Company from the boundaries of
Bengal to Peshawar is a necessary introduction to a study of adminis-
trative development in the three areas, each approximately 100,000
square miles, which are now officially known as the United Provinces,
the Central Provinces, and the Panjab; and which will hereafter be
collectively referred to as "the three provinces", (i) The districts
around Benares were ceded in 1 775 by the ruler of Oudh, and (2) the
" Ceded territories ", comprising most of the present United Provinces
exclusive of Oudh, by his successor in 1801.^ (3) In 1803 Sindhia,
the defeated Maratha chief, yielded the "Conquered territories",
lying to the north of the last-mentioned tract and extending west of
the Jumna ; and in the same year a portion of Bundelkhand was
obtained from the Peshwa.^ (4) The successful Gurkha War of i8i6
added the northern hill districts of the United Provinces, and (5) in
1 81 8, after the third Maratha War, the Bhonsla raja of Nagpur
surrendered the Sagar and Narbada territories, except a small area
in the north already ceded by the Peshwa in 181 7.^ They are now
included in the Central Provinces. (6) In 1809 the Sikh states to the
east of the Satlej placed themselves under British protection. This
arrangement was in practice coupled with a claim to escheat in
favour of the suzerain on failure of heirs, and it led to gradual minor
annexations up to 1846, the year which saw the conclusion of the
first Sikh War. The remaining states, mostly very petty in status and
area, were subsequently absorbed, except six of importance, which
still survive as feudatories.* (7) The same year saw the acquisition of
the Jalandhar Doab, the plain country between the rivers Satlej and
Beas, together with an adjacent hilly tract. (8) The second Sikh War
resulted in 1849 in the annexation of the Panjab up to the present
1 Baden Powell, Land Systems of British India, i, 63; Field, Regulations of the Bengal Code,
1875, pp. 9, 10; Administration Report of North-West Provinces, 1882-3, PP* 29, 30; Adm. Rep.
of United Provinces, 1911-12,?. 14.
2 Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 64; Field, op. cit. p. 15; Adm. Rep. N.-W. Provs. pp. 30, 31.
3 Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 68, 69; Imperial Gazetteer, x, 17; Adm. Rep. Central Provinces,
1882-3, P- J I ; Adm. Rep. JV.-W. Provs. p. 32; House of Commons Papers, xviii, 533.
* Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 43; Adm. Rep. M.-W. Provs. 1882-3, PP- 31-35 Adm. Rep. Panjab,
1882-3, PP- 16-17; Panjab Settlement Manual, pp. 5, 6; Ibbetson, Settlement Report ofKarnal,
p. 35-
76 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., G.P., AND PANJAB
north-western frontier. ^ (9) In 1853 the Nagpur and Jhansi states
lapsed to the British Government, 2 while (lo) Berar was assigned to
it by the Nizam of Hyderabad and has been in its possession ever
since.* (11) The process of expansion was completed in 1856 by the
annexation of Oudh.*
In 1836 the tracts (i) to (4) in the above resume were formed into
the North-Western Provinces with an administration under a lieu-
tenant-governor separate from that of Bengal, and to it tract (5) was
attached until 1861, when it was included in the present Central
Provinces, then newly formed under a chief commissioner. ^ The
cis-Satlej states and the Jalandhar Doab, nos. (6) and (7), were after
1846 each placed under a commissioner directly subordinate to the
Government of India, and subsequently to the Resident at Lahore;
but in 1849 they were absorbed in the new province of the Panjab.^
The lapsed state of Nagpur was included in the Central Provinces in
1861, while Jhansi passed to the North-Western Provinces. Berar was
administered by a commissioner until 1903, when it was attached to
the Central Provinces.'' In 1858 the districts west of the Jumna,
ceded in 1803 and known as the Delhi territory, were transferred
from the North-Western Provinces to the Panjab,^ and from the latter
in 1 90 1 the present North-West-Frontier Province was separated.
Oudh on annexation was placed under a chief commissioner, the
charge being amalgamated with the lieutenant-governorship of the
North-Western Provinces in 1877.^ The combined areas are now
officially known as the United Provinces (of Agra and Oudh) .
The distinction between regulation and non-regulation areas, once
of importance, has long since been practically obsolete. In 1 793^^
Lord Cornwallis, in pursuance of statutory legislative powers then
existing, issued a revised code of forty-eight regulations for the presi-
dency of Bengal, and it is this body of legislation which, with sub-
sequent additions, was specifically known as the Bengal Regulations.
In 1795 they were extended, together with the permanent settlement,
to the Benares districts. ^^ To subsequent acquisitions, if formally
included in the Bengal Presidency, the regulations applied auto-
^ Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 70, 71 ; Adm. Rep. Panjaby 1882-3, PP- 28, 31.
' Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 65-9; Adm. Rep. Cent. Provs. 1882-3, P- 1 1-
' Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 49 and iii, 345; Adm. Rep. Cent. Provs. 1911-12, p. 17; Lord
Dalhousie's Minute of 28 February, 1856, para. i8.
* H.ofC. Papers, 1856, vol. xlv; Field, op. cit. p. 10; Adm. Rep. N.-IV. Provs. p. 34.
* Field, op. cit. p. 15; Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 36; Government of India Resolution of
2 November, 1861 ; Adm. Rep. Cent. Provs. 191 1-12, p. 1 1.
* Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1911-12, pp. 17-18.
' Baden Powell, op. cit. iii, 346; Adm. Rep. Cent. Provs. 191 1-12, p. 18.
* Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 45; Adm. Rep. N.-W. Provs. p. 34; Adm. Rep. Punjab, 191 1-12,
p. 20.
' Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 42; Adm. Rep. N.-W. Provs. p. 34.
^" Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 81 ; Field, op. cit. pp. vi, 42; Fifth Report of Select Committee
of House of Commons, 1812; Moral and Material Progress Report, 1882-3, p. 34; Campbell,
Modern India, 1852, p. 34.
^^ Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs. 1911-12, p. 15; Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 63; Fifth Report, 1812.
THE REGULATIONS 77
matically in the absence of any special prescription to the contrary.
For others there was, up to 1833, no legislative machinery, and all
rules and ordinances needed for purposes of administration were
issued by the governor-general purely in his executive capacity.^
Moreover, he was unfettered in the selection and recruitment of
necessary staff, whereas in the presidency territories all offices had
under statute to be filled by covenanted civil servants of the Com-
pany. ^ The distinction favoured elasticity, rendering it possible to
adapt the form of administration in new territories to diverse local
conditions and to avoid undue complexity in backward tracts. Of
the successive acquisitions enumerated above, (i), (2), (3) and (4)
only were attached to the Bengal Presidency, and to these, except (4)
and the Delhi territory,^ the regulations as a whole were applied,
though with needful local modifications. The legislative changes made
in 1833 have been noticed elsewhere. It was not until 1861 that
regular legislation was possible for territories acquired after 1833.*
For such, up to the later year, rules and ordinances were issued by
the governor-general and by provincial authorities in their executive
capacity.
The type of administrative machinery which Lord Gornwallis's
apprehension of the abuse of executive power led him to create in
Bengal has already been described.^ The chief official in a district
was the judge and magistrate. He disposed of civil litigation and of
minor criminal cases, committing the more serious to the provincial
courts of appeal and circuit, which were in turn subject to the control
of the chief civil and criminal courts at Calcutta. The collector of the
district was an almost purely fiscal officer, his sole function being the
collection of revenue with prompt enforcement of penalties in case of
default ; while most of his proceedings were open to challenge in the
courts of his own district.^
This system, together with the regulations, was extended to the
"Ceded territories" in 1803, and in 1805 to the "Conquered terri-
tories" and to the Bundelkhand districts of Banda and Hamirpur;'
the whole of these areas being placed under the direct control of the
governor-general and subjected to the jurisdiction of the Calcutta
courts. They were known as the Upper Provinces. This organisation
was retained with little alteration until the period 1829-35, when
drastic changes, similar in Bengal and in the Upper Provinces, were
made by Lord William Bentinck. A new class of officers, designated
^ Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 82.
2 Imperial Gazette, iv, 42; 33 Geo. Ill, c. 52; Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, p. 36.
^ Ibbetson, op. cit. p. 38,
* Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 89.
5 Gf. vol. V, pp. 453 sqq., supra.
« Bengal Reg. 11 of 1793; Adm. Rep. Bengal, 1911-12, p. 41; Field, op. cit. p. 172;
Kaye, History of the Administration of the East India Company, 1853, pp. 387 sqq.-, Gampbell,
op. cit. p. 180; Fifth Report, 181 2.
' Field, op. cit. pp. 147-8.
78 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., G.P., AND PANJAB
commissioners of divisions, was created, a division being an area of
four or five districts and thus not too large for efficient supervision.
The commissioners exercised full powers of control in all branches of
fiscal, executive, and police work, being subject as regards the first to
a board of revenue at Calcutta ; while in order to relieve the pro-
vincial courts of appeal and circuit, which were congested with arrears,
their criminal jurisdiction as courts of circuit was transferred to the
new officers.^ In the next place, the unworkable extension which the
limits of the jurisdiction of the principal courts at Calcutta had under-
gone, as a result of the expansion of territory, necessitated the creation
in 1 83 1 of similar separate courts at Agra for the Upper Provinces. 2
To these new courts was transferred the remaining civil jurisdiction
of the provincial courts, which thus came to an end in 1833. Finally,
owing to the excessive burden which criminal jurisdiction on circuit
was soon found to be imposing on the commissioners, it was trans-
ferred to the district judges, who thus became in addition circuit, or
sessions judges, while their magisterial powers, being incompatible
with their new functions, were passed on to the collectors. The
collector was thus invested with combined judicial and executive
powers under the designation of magistrate and collector.^ The union
has been retained up to the present day, except for a temporary return
to separation in Bengal during the period 1837-59.* A subordinate
Indian judiciary, with a more or less defined jurisdiction, had been
growing up since the early period of British rule from among persons
who were regularly employed as a semi-official paid agency for arbi-
tration in civil suits. ^ In 1831 Lord William Bentinck increased its
strength, raised its status, and enhanced its powers, so that it was soon
dealing in courts of first instance with the greater part of the whole
volume of civil litigation. It was in fact the forerunner of the modern
provincial services. The criminal branch of the judiciary was also
strengthened by the appointment, under an act of 1843, of persons,
both European and Indian, other than covenanted civil servants of
the Company to the post of deputy-magistrate.^
Lawlessness prevailed in the Upper Provinces for a long period after
their annexation, and several years passed before insurgents ceased to
disturb the Doab, the tract lying between the rivers Ganges and
Jumna. The Pindaris were troublesome; the crime of thagi, described
elsewhere, was rife; and pirates preyed on the river trade-routes. As
late as 181 7 the fortress of Hathras in the Doab had to be reduced
* Reg. 1 of 1829; Baden Powell, o/>. cit. i, 666; Field, o/>.«/. pp. 132, 154; //. ofC. Papers^
18^1-2, vol. xii; Kaye, op. cit. p. 347; Campbell, op. cit. p. 257.
* Bengal Reg. vi of 1831 ; Field, op. cit. p. 149; Kaye, op. cit. p. 349.
' Field, op. cit. p. 154; Kaye, op. cit. p. 348; Adm. Rep. Bengal, 191 1-12, p. 45.
* Field, op. cit. p. 155; Canipbell, op. cit. pp. 2'igsqq.; Adm. Rep. Bengal, 191 1-12, p. 46.
' Bengal Reg. xl of 1793; Field, op. cit. pp. 144, 156-9; Kaye, op. cit. p. 350; Adm. Rep.
Bengal, 191 1-12, pp. 42, 45.
* Field, op. cit. p. 159; Kaye, op. cit. p. 351 ; Adm. Rep. Bengal, 191 1-12, p. 46.
EARLY POLICE SYSTEM 79
by siege, and gang robbery was very prevalent about Saharanpur,
while marauders from Central India infested the south-western
frontier. By 1830, however, some degree of permanent peace was
established. 1 During this period, and indeed for many years later,
the district police system was merely a modified survival from the
days of indigenous rule, when the maintenance of order in rural tracts
was the duty of influential local land-holders and village communities ;
while in large towns the responsibility lay on the kotwal, a government
official who was in receipt of a substantial salary with many per-
quisites, and who also provided his own staff. ^ In 1793 Lord Corn-
wallis abolished the police duties of the zamindars of Bengal and
appointed Indian police officers, termed darogas, each of whom, with
a small force of armed men under the control of the district magis-
trate, was placed in charge of an area some twenty miles square.^
This system was extended in due course to the Upper Provinces,
though there the local responsibility of land-holders was maintained.
For the preservation of law and order the district magistrate thus had
under him a loosely organised body of purely local police and an
agency of village watchmen, who were the dependents of land-holders
and of village communities.* The darogas were paid partly by fixed
salaries and partly by fees for each dacoit (gang-robber) arrested,
with a percentage on the value of stolen property recovered, provided
that the thief was convicted. ^ The system, though some improvement
on its predecessor, was inefficient, while the magistrate, amid his
judicial duties, was unable to supervise it properly. An attempt to
improve it was made in 1829 by giving the new commissioners powers
of control and superintendence. The wide prevalence of thagi and
dacoity, for the suppression of which special agency had to be
employed, clearly indicated the inadequacy of the existing system of
district police. Such as it was, it continued without much change
until 1 86 1.
The general criminal law enforced in the Upper Provinces until
the enactment of the present Indian Penal Code in i860 was, as in
Bengal, Muhammadan law, very extensively altered as time went on
by British regulations and judicial decisions.^ Some punishments had
to be modified so as to render them deterrent rather than vindictive ;
others, too lenient for serious offences, had to be made more severe.
For many crimes, with which the Islamic system did not deal, addi-
tional provision had to be made; while fantastic rules of procedure
^ Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs. 1911-12, p. 11.
2 Imp. Gaz. II, 382-6; Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, P- 7^> Campbell, op. cit. p. 79;
Report of Indian Police Commission, 1903, chap, i, pp. 4 sqq.
^ Bengal Reg. i of 1 793, viii (4) , and xxvii of 1 795, v (4) ; Imp. Gaz. and Moral and Mat.
Prog. Rep. loc. cit.
* Bengal Reg. xx of 1 8 1 7 ; Campbell, op. cit. pp. 442 sqq. ; H. o/Q. Papers, 1 857-8, XLin, 75.
^ Report of Indian Police Commission, 1903, p. 6.
« Field, op. cit. p. 175; H. ofC. Papers, 1856, vol. xxv; Whitley Stokes, The Anglo-Indian
Codes, I, 2.
8o ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., G.P., AND PANJAB
and evidence were abolished. Under such conditions the criminal
law gradually became unmanageable in its bulk and complexity. In
civil litigation questions of inheritance, marriage, caste, and other
semi-religious matters were decided by Quranic law for Muham-
madans and by the prescriptions of the sastras for Hindus. In cases of
succession to landed estates, established custom, if such there were,
was followed ; while in matters other than the above the courts were
enjoined to act in accordance with equity.^
Fiscal necessity quickly and naturally focussed the attention of a
new government on the assessment and collection of revenue, especially
revenue from land. The requirements of this earliest branch of
administrative activity went far to mould the framework of the whole
administrative organisation and to determine its shape and character.
The origin and nature of Indian land-revenue, and the Permanent
Settlement of Bengal, have been described in another part of this
work. Up to a time shortly before 1818 the views of British adminis-
trators on land-revenue questions were dominated by the principles
of that settlement. Its extension to the "Ceded" and "Conquered
territories" was contemplated after their annexation, and indeed
promised in 18072 subject to the sanction of the home authorities.
But the directors, now grown doubtful about the propriety of the
Bengal system and to some extent conscious of the prevailing ig-
norance of the real nature of Indian conditions, hesitated to give their
approval; and in 181 1, after local investigation by a Board of Com-
missioners appointed in 1807, they definitely prohibited a permanent
settlement, while directing the continuance of the system of provisional
short-term settlements which had been made periodically since the
annexations.^ These, based on no very definite principles, except that
the state was entitled to the entire net assets of land, less a small
allowance for the cost of collection, were far from being satisfactory,
since the revenue to be paid was determined without actual enquiry
into resources and income and mainly with reference to the excessive
exactions of the displaced Indian rulers.*
Assessment was often no more than the mere acceptance of the
highest bid of a revenue farmer without regard to the rights of actual
cultivators or of other persons, about which indeed little, if any, satis-
factory enquiry was made. Harsh methods of revenue collection,
adopted from the Bengal system and involving immediate sale of an
estate on default in payment, aggravated the mischief, and often
caused an inequitable loss of rights and interests in land, which
1 Field, op. cit. pp. lyo sgq.; Imp. Gaz. n, 127; //. ofC. Papers, 1856, vol. xxv.
* Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 15-17; Field, op. cit. p. 1 1 1 ; Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs. 191 1-12,
p. 16.
« Baden Powell, op. cit. p. 19; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 237-40; Field, op. cit. p. 1 13; //. 0/ C.
Papers, 1 83 1-2, vol. n. »
* Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs. 1911-12, p. 16; Adm. Rep. N.-W. Provs. 1882-3, PP- 42, 43;
Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, P- ^28; Moreland, The Revenue Administration of the
United Provinces, 1 911, pp. 31-3-
LAND REVENUE SETTLEMENT 8i
under the improved system adopted later might have been pre-
served.^
This state of things persisted in the Upper Provinces up to the
period 1822-8. In the interval the Board of Commissioners continued
its investigations with a view to the introduction of a better fiscal
system. Ultimately in 18 19 its recommendations were presented by
its secretary, Holt Mackenzie, in a famous minute, the first document
to exhibit any adequate comprehension of land-tenures in Upper
India and of the requirements of efficient land-revenue administra-
tion. The recommendations were embodied in Regulation vii of 1822,
of which the main prescriptions were: (i) a cadastral survey of the
land; (2) a full record, after necessary adjudication, of all landed
rights and interests; (3) a moderate assessment of land-revenue after
adequate local enquiry; (4) recognition and protection of tenant-
right. ^ In one form or another these principles subsequently governed
land-revenue administration in all parts of Upper India; and in
following their practical application — an operation technically termed
a regular, as distinguished from a summary, or provisional settlement
— it is important to recognise that indigenous Indian rights in land
were without any precise legal definition; little more in fact than
comparatively vague claims, supported by local custom and usually
respected by rulers who aspired to be tolerably just. Frequently they
were of kinds strangely different from those familiar to the early
British administrators in their own country.^ The primary aim of the
investigation of rights was to determine the persons, whether in-
dividuals or quasi-corporate bodies, who were entitled to the profits
of land-holding, and who would therefore naturally be responsible
for the payment of the land-revenue, or with whom, in technical
terms, a settlement could be made. It was true that under the exac-
tions of the former rulers such profits had gradually vanished, but
under a moderated state demand they would obviously revive and
become the object of a legal proprietary right, limited, it might be,
by the coexistent rights of other persons. The vague nature of the
existing rights and the obliteration which they had suffered in the
recent political chaos as well as from the mischievous methods of
revenue administration, inherited from Bengal, which characterised
the first twenty years of British rule in the Upper Provinces, rendered
the adjudication a task of unusual difficulty.
In the regulation of 1822* five-sixths of the net rental was prescribed
as the standard land-revenue, a good deal less than that in force under
native rulers but much higher than that adopted in later years.
* Kaye, op. cit. pp. 240-7; Baden Powell, op.cit. 11, 118; H.ofC. Papers, 1831-2, xi, 156;
Panjab Sett. Manual, pp. 8-10.
^ Field, op. cit. p. 115; Bengal Reg. vii of 1822; H. Mackenzie's Minute of 1819; Baden
Powell, op. cit. II, 20-4; Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, P- 128; Panjab Sett. Manual,
pp. 1 1-12; Adm. Rep. M.-W. Provs. 1882-3, P* 42-
^ Field, op. cit. p. 29. * Bengal Reg. vii of 1822.
C H I VI 6
82 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., C.P., AND PANJAB
Progress in carrying out the regular settlement was very slow. Besides
the decision of questions involving vague rights and customs, it
included the very difficult task of assessing land-revenue on a rental
basis, while rents, even when they existed, were dubious in nature and
amount. Rents paid in money were rare, so that rental calculations
depended largely on estimates of the value of grain produce and of
the cost of cultivation, a process which it was attempted to carry out
holding by holding. In a few years it became clear that success on
such lines was impossible. In 1 833, under the auspices of Lord William
Bentinck, a simplified system was inaugurated, though the principles
of 1822 were retained.^ It was elaborated during the next twenty
years under the direction of two noted officers, R. M. Bird and James
Thomason. The standard demand was reduced to two-thirds of the
net rental, and a less theoretical method of assessment — known as
"aggregate to detail" — was devised. The land-revenue was fixed with
reference to general considerations affecting the tract under settle-
ment, such as agricultural and economic resources, past fiscal history,
and the level of money rents paid by tenants, or those estimated to be
fairly payable, wherever such rents had come into common use. The
gross assessment thus determined was distributed over individual
villages with reference to their comparative capacities as ascertained
by local enquiry. Theoretical estimates of rental based on assumed
data were discouraged. The cadastral survey was carried out for
every village on the basis of a prior scientific topographical survey
executed by professional officers. ^
The regular settlement served to elucidate that much discussed,
much belauded, and much misunderstood institution, the Indian
village community. Its significant feature is the ownership of estates
not by single individuals, but by groups of persons more or less closely
connected. Completely joint or collective ownership and enjoyment
of the entire village area is by no means an invariable incident. Some
degree of communal control over it is commonly found, mainly in the
type of village technically known as "zamindari", but severalty in
the beneficial occupation of a part, at least, of the area is usual, the
sizes of the several holdings corresponding to shares regulated by
various definite and for the most part traditional methods.^ In
Southern and Central India a somewhat different type of village
community exists, technically known as "ryotwari", in which separa-
tion of individual interests within the group is practically complete.
In the North-Western Provinces the settlement was generally made
with village communities of the zamindari type, the members being
jointly as well as severally responsible. But in very many cases the
* Field, op. cit. p. 117; Bengal Reg. ix of 1833; Adm. Rep. N.-W. Provs. p. 43; Adm. Rep.
Unit. Provs. 191 1-12, p. 17; Panjab Sett. Manual, pp. 12-13; Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 25-7;
Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, P- 128.
" Baden Powell, op. cit. pp. 23, 38, 41 sqq.
* Baden Powell, The Indian Village Community, London, 1896.
TENANT RIGHT 83
body consisted of only a few persons, often indeed of a single individual,
who, or whose predecessor, had been a revenue farmer of the village
in the early years following annexation. A holder of a seignorial
status over a community was generally compensated by a fixed annual
sum payable by it.^
The subordinate rights of tenants, not members of the community,
were also recorded and gradually protected. Only the barest reference
is here possible to the subject of tenant-right, a highly controversial
problem of Indian administration. The majority of indigenous Indian
tenancies comparatively seldom originated in any definite contract
between landlord and tenant : they were more frequently the relics of
previous more complete tenures which under various influences had
sunk to the status of a precarious occupancy, dependent for its con-
tinuance on the vague right, traditionally recognised, of the first
clearer of waste land and his heirs ; or on the fact that, when waste
land was plentiful and cultivators comparatively few, there was little
of that inducement to eject which came later under the altered con-
ditions of British rule. An adequate treatment of tenant-right clearly
required a classification of tenancies according to origin and an
ascription to each class of the rights equitably appropriate to it. In
the permanent settlement of Bengal no such treatment was attempted,
and the security of tenants, though promised as an essential part of
the settlement, 2 was left to the operation of agreements which it was
vainly expected would be made between them and the landlords,
while a regulation of 1 799 gave to the latter a harsh power of distraint,
which produced much mischief Warned by the errors of Bengal,
British administrators in the North-Western Provinces tried to define
and protect the interests of tenants, but a definite classification was
very difficult, and in practice a broad rule, apparently first suggested
by Lord William Bentinck in 1832, was followed, under which a
tenant on proving twelve years' continuous occupation of his holding
was admitted to a permanent and heritable tenure at a judicially
fixed rent.^ A rule so wide probably covered more cases than really
deserved protection, but it was ultimately embodied in Act X of 1859,
the earliest Indian legislation which defined and protected tenant-
right, both in Bengal and in the North-Western Provinces.
The first regular settlement of those provinces, excluding the
Benares districts, which had already been permanently settled, was
carried out district by district during the period 1833-42,* the revenue
being assessed for a term which was generally thirty years. It avoided
^ Moreland, op. cit. pp. 35-9; Baden Powell, Land Systems of British India, 11, 82, 83;
Adm. Rep. M.-W. Provs. 1882-3, PP- 3^} 39*
2 Bengal Reg. i of 1793, §8(1); Field, op. cit. p. 35; Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 403-5.
^ Panjab Sett. Manual, pp. 97-9; Selections from Revenue Records of N.-W. Provs. 1822-
33; Moreland, op. cit. pp. 55, 56.
* Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, P- 128; Adm. Rep. N.-W. Provs. 1882-3, P- 43; Field,
op. cit. p. 118; Baden Powell, op. cit. n, 27.
6-2
84 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., G.P., AND PANJAB
the radical defects of the permanent settlement of Bengal — haphazard
assessment based on inadequate data, the absence of any record of
rights or of any form of survey, and the insecurity of tenants. In the
Benares districts they were gradually remedied, as far as possible,
many years later, by the execution of cadastral surveys, undertaken
in 1877,^ and by the preparation of a record of rights.
The importance of canal irrigation for the agriculture of the Upper
Provinces soon attracted the attention of British officers. Their first
efforts were directed to the restoration of canals made by previous
rulers rather than to the construction of entirely new projects. After
a preliminary survey in 1809-10, work began in 181 5 on an old
channel which had been originally made in the middle of the four-
teenth century by Firoz Shah, the Tughlaq king of Delhi, for the
irrigation of the arid tracts of Hissar and Sirsa, and which after various
vicissitudes had ceased to flow during the period of Moghul decay.
It was in reality a series of natural drainages connected by excavation
rather than a true canal. 2 No special irrigation department was
created, but the services of military officers were utilised and the
strictest economy in expenditure was enforced. The restoration, carried
out on lines far from scientific, was completed in 1827. The work, now
known as the Western Jumna Canal, had a total length of 425 miles,
including distributaries, and, besides providing Delhi with water,
irrigated a considerable area in the Hissar district, which in 1807 had
been an almost uninhabited waste. In 1822 work was undertaken on
a similar but smaller channel from the left bank of the Jumna, con-
structed early in the eighteenth century by a Moghul ruler. This
project, now the Eastern Jumna Canal, with a total length of 155 miles,
was completed in 1830, but it took several years longer to remedy
defects which soon showed themselves.^ Meanwhile the directors of
the Company, unimpressed with the importance of irrigation for their
new territories, were loath to embark on costly schemes. Whatever
expenditure was allowed had to be met from current revenue; the
days of loan funds raised for productive works were yet far distant.
It was not until 1854 that the first great original project, the Upper
Ganges Canal, was completed, though it had been suggested as early
as 1836. Famine served to emphasise its necessity.
The Upper Provinces were in a part of India peculiarly liable to
that scourge, the tract about Delhi having suffered thirteen visitations
in the previous five centuries. The development of British famine
policy has been sketched elsewhere in this volume. Its two funda-
mental features, the existence of means for the rapid transport of food
and a system of public works on which the mass of agricultural labour
* Baden Powell, op. cit. ii, 40; Adm. Rep. N.-W. Provs. 1882-3, P* 50«
* Triennial Review of Irrigation in India, Calcutta, 1922, p. 24; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 278 sqq.;
Imp. Gaz. Ill, 327 sqq.
* Triennial RevieWy p. 25; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 283 sqq.
FAMINE AND IRRIGATION 85
suddenly thrown out of employment can earn a subsistence wage, did
not exist, and indeed could not have existed under native rulers. Their
famine measures were generally limited to a prohibition of grain
export, penalties for private hoarding, and the distribution of a modi-
cum of relief.^ There was thus no famine organisation, however crude,
which the new rulers could inherit and utilise. Their own experience
soon began. In 1803 the monsoon failed and famine visited the Upper
Provinces. One-third of a million sterling of land-revenue was re-
mitted and land-holders were assisted with advances, while bounties
were given on import of grain. In 181 2 famine again appeared in
the country lying west of the Jumna. In 1837-8 it prevailed in a
severe form in a tract which held a population of twenty-eight
millions, including twenty-one millions in the then newly formed
North-Western Provinces. On this occasion the first definite efforts at
famine organisation were made at a cost of nearly a quarter of a
million sterling; the government definitely recognising its responsi-
bility for the relief of the able-bodied, while leaving that of invalids
and orphans to public charity. ^ Liberal suspensions and remissions of
revenue, to the extent of nearly one million sterling, were given,
though loans and advances to land-holders were discouraged. The two
canals which had been recently reopened fully proved their value in
the famine, which served to impress on the authorities the vast im-
portance of irrigation, and in particular to secure attention for the
famous project which subsequently became the Upper Ganges Canal,
now irrigating large areas in the Doab. Originated by Colonel
Colvin, it was elaborated by Sir P. Cautley of the Bengal Artillery,
who ultimately constructed the canal. Work began in 1842 but it was
interrupted by lack of funds and by other causes during the Afghan
and Sikh wars. Irrigation actually commenced in 1 854, but operations
were hampered by the Mutiny, and it was not until the famine of
1 860-1 that the full supply of water could be utilised. Though it was
one of the earliest of the British canals,^ and though defects in design
had gradually to be rectified, portions of it are even yet unique in
size and conception. Its total length, including branches and dis-
tributaries, is over 3800 miles. It is still the largest single irrigation
work in India and in 1919-20 it irrigated over one and a third
million acres.
Comparatively few public works, other than canals, some main
lines of communications, and some necessary public buildings, were
constructed during the early years of British administration. There
was no Public Works Department; projects being executed through
the agency of a Military Board, an inefficient arrangement which
existed until 1854.*
* Imp. Gaz. Ill, 477 sqq.
2 Imp. Gaz. HI, 484, 501 ; Report of Famine Commission, 1880, p. 31 ; Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs.
1911-12, p. 22.
^ Triennial Review, p. 30; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 287 sqq. * Imp. Gaz. iv, 307.
86 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., G.P., AND PANJAB
The indigenous system of liquor excise, termed abkari, was one of
farm pure and simple, the unrestricted and exclusive right to manu-
facture and sell spirituous liquor within a more or less defined area
being usually leased to the local Moghul tax farmer, whether an
official or a zamindar. Under the Company's government a similar
system of leases of defined areas in favour of licensees was continued,
but between 1790 and 1800 restrictions on the number and locality
of shops and stills were introduced. ^ This modified system was
extended to the Upper Provinces, but as early as 181 3, in order to
secure greater control, central distilleries were established at con-
venient places, generally the headquarters of districts, or of their sub-
divisions, termed tahsils. Within these buildings the licensed distillers
were required to carry on their operations, the right to sell at specified
shops being separately licensed; though in order to cope with illicit
distillation, an ever-besetting difficulty in Indian excise administra-
tion, single stills were permitted in distant outlying areas, their
licences covering both manufacture and sale. To such single detached
stills the term "outstill", so common in Indian excise discussions, is
properly applicable. In the Upper Provinces as well as in Bengal the
new system was found unable to cope with illicit traffic, and after
1 824 there was a general return to the system of farms or leases of
specified shops in defined areas, with outstills where necessary. This
arrangement, with minor modifications, continued in force in the
Upper Provinces until after 1858. The attainment of the ideal, then
only dimly perceived, of controlled consumption combined with high
or even adequate taxation was incompatible with a volume of illicit
traffic with which the administration of the time was quite unable to
contend.
As in the case of spirituous liquor, the excise of opium, regarded by
the Moghuls as a subject for state monopoly, took the form of a farm
of the exclusive right to manufacture and sell. The manifold defects
of this system, which the East India Company took over in 1773,
caused its abandonment in 1 797, the government then assuming the
monopoly of manufacture through its own agencies ; an organisation
which was extended to the Upper Provinces and has been described
elsewhere. 2
Municipal self-government did not exist at the introduction of
British rule.^ A pure exotic, it was planted very gradually and tenta-
tively by the new-comers. Their first efforts were confined to the
presidency towns, and it was not until 1850 that legislative provision
was made for the constitution of municipal bodies in provincial towns.
These consisted of the district magistrate, in whom all executive
* Papers relating to Excise Administration in India printed in Government of India
Gaz/etU of I March, 1890; Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, P- ^1^\ ^^P- ^^« ^v, 254;
H. ofC. Paper Sy 1831-2, vol. xi.
* Imp. Gaz. IV, 2A2; H. of C. Papers, 1 890-1, lix, 384.
* Imp. Gaz. rv, 281, 284 sqq.\ Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, P- A^'
NON-REGULATION AREAS 87
authority was vested, and a body of nominated councillors, whose
function was to assess rates in accordance with certain prescribed
principles, and to assist the district magistrate with advice. Taxation
might be a personal assessment on householders, or by rates on houses,
and the proceeds were expended in the entertainment of town watch-
men, simple sanitation, lighting and other local objects. The act of
1850 was fairly widely applied, and apparently with a considerable
degree of success, in the North-Western Provinces.^
Passing now from the regulation districts of that region, the re-
mainder of this chapter will be concerned with non-regulation areas.
To the explanation of the origin and general significance of that dis-
tinction as already given, it may be added that the type of adminis-
tration adopted in non-regulation areas was characterised by simple
and more direct modes of procedure and by the greater accessibility
of officials to the people; but chiefly by the union of all powers,
executive, magisterial, and judicial, in the hands of the district officer,
here termed deputy-commissioner in place of magistrate and collector,
subject however to the appellate and supervisional jurisdiction of the
commissioner of the division in all branches of work. ^ The system
was paternal rather than formally legal, though legal principles were
by no means set aside; and it largely depended for its success on the
personal character, initiative, vigour and discretion of the local
officers. Passing over the non-regulation Sagar and Narbada terri-
tories, of which the early administration was not conspicuously suc-
cessful,^ though law and order and a judicial system were established,
we may proceed at once to an account of administrative development
in the Panjab, the whole of which was always non-regulation.
That province, as it exists at present, including the recently
separated Delhi enclave, comprises cis-Satlej and trans-Satlej portions.
The first consists of the Delhi territory, annexed in 1803, and of a
tract, lying between it and the Satlej, which was gradually absorbed
as a result of the protectorate assumed in 1809 and of the first Sikh
War. The second comprises the annexations of 1846 and 1849, the
Jalandhar Doab and the Panjab proper. In accordance with the
policy approved on the retirement of the Marquis of Wellesley, the
Delhi territory after its formal annexation was for long outside the
sphere of direct British control, which it was sought to restrict to the
eastern side of the Jumna, leaving the territory, which, as the result
of recent war, was largely a deserted waste, in the hands of a ring of
semi-independent chiefs, with whose administration the Resident at
Delhi interfered as little as possible while endeavouring to maintain
peace. The aggressions attempted by Ranjit Singh on the country
east of the Satlej, foiled in 1809 by the Treaty of Amritsar, resulted
^ Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, p. 54.
2 Campbell, op. cit. p. 250; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 447 sqq.; Sir G. Aitchison, Lawrence, Oxford,
1892, pp. 59 •^99-; imp. Gaz. iv, 54.
2 Adm. Rep. Cent. Provs. 1882-3, P- i^-
88 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., C.P., AND PANJAB
in the protectorate already mentioned, but even then administrative
control over the Delhi territory was very slowly asserted.^ It was only
in 1819-20 that the tract was divided into four districts under locally
resident officers, a fifth being added in 1824. In 1832 they were
definitely included in the North-Western Provinces for purposes of
administration, which it was directed should be carried on in the
spirit of the Bengal Regulations, though these were never, it appears,
formally extended to them. The early revenue administration up to
1828 was of the same highly unsatisfactory character as in other parts
of the North-Western Provinces, but the tract was greatly benefited
by the restoration of the Western Jumna Canal, especially during the
famine of 1837-8, of which it felt the full force. Up to its union with
the Panjab in 1858 its administration proceeded on the lines already
described, a regular settlement being made between 1837 and 1842.^
The growth of the supremacy of Maharaja Ranjit Singh over the
trans-Satlej Panjab has been described elsewhere. Here we deal only
with his administrative system.^ Immersed in war and diplomacy, he
had no leisure for the creation of a stable polity. Beyond military
organisation and conquest, the collection of revenue was his chief
interest. To this all other branches of his administration were sub-
ordinated, and to it the attention of all his officials was unremittingly
directed. He appears to have utilised all known sources of taxation :
imposts direct and indirect, on land, on houses, on persons, on manu-
factures, on commerce, on imports and exports; all had a place in
his fiscal system. The revenue of remote provinces was farmed to men
of wealth and influence, or of vigour and capacity, and they were
invested with powers of government in the exercise of which they
experienced little interference, provided that revenue was regularly
remitted. Military chiefs, who enjoyed the revenue of jagirs, or
assigned tracts of land, on condition of furnishing armed contingents,
also exercised practically unlimited authority in their jurisdictions.
These farmers and jagirdars had under them local agents, or kardars,
who exercised such administrative functions as were recognised, and
of these the only one of importance was the collection of revenue. In
tracts, neither farmed nor held in jagir, and known as khalsa, the
kardars were under the nazim, or local governor of a group of dis-
tricts, who was directly responsible to the maharaja and his informal
council, or cabinet; but their positions depended largely on the
influence which they could command at court, and on their success
in collecting revenue. In Ranjit Singh's later years central control
was much relaxed and the system of farming became more prevalent.
Land-revenue was collected as a rule direct from the cultivator in the
shape of a fixed share of the produce,* except in the case of crops, such
1 Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1882-3, P- 23; Ibbetson, op. cit. pp. 34, 35; yl</m. Rep. Panjab, 191 1-12,
pp. 16-17. * Ibbetson, op. cit. chaps, iv and v; Panjab Sett. Manual, p. 17.
' Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1849-51, sect, i, pt 11; 1882-3, P- 25; H. ofC. Papers, 1849, vol. xli.
* Panjab Sett. Manual, chap. iv.
THE RULE OF RANJIT SINGH 89
as sugar-cane and cotton, which could not readily be divided. In
lieu of the actual share of the crop its estimated money value was
sometimes taken, common shares being one-third and two-fifths, with
one-half on the more fertile lands. Numerous additional dues in cash
or kind were also collected, and cultivators of all grades were treated
on the same footing without reference to any distinctions of superior
or inferior rights on land, though occasionally the leaders of the village
community received a measure of indulgence. Joint responsibility of
its members for the payment of land-revenue was not enforced, except
rarely when a few of its leaders were allowed to engage for a lump
sum, and then they tended to assume the privileges of landlords
towards the rest of the cultivators, who fell back into the position of
tenants.
There were no definite and regular courts of justice, though there
was a judicial officer, termed the adalati, in Lahore. Private property
in^ land of a kind was recognised and in principle upheld, and the
general corporate existence and obligations of village communities
were maintained, while disputes were settled to a minor extent by the
local authorities, but mainly by private arbitration, resort to which
by means of a comparatively organised system of committees, or
panchayats, was widely practised. There were local police officers, but
their functions were more often political and military than civil, their
duty being to check local disturbances and to arrange for the move-
ments of troops. There was no excise system, the production and sale
of liquor being quite uncontrolled. All officials enjoyed much licence,
but cultivators were not as a rule needlessly oppressed if they paid
their revenue. The criminal law was unwritten and contained mainly
two penalties, fine and mutilation. The first usually secured immunity
from further punishment for almost any crime; the second when
inflicted being reserved for offences such as adultery, seduction and
robbery. Imprisonment was unknown and capital punishment rare.
Ranjit Singh allowed his favourites great power, at first no doubt as
a counterpoise to the influence of the leaders of the old Sikh con-
federacies, but later from the compulsion of physical weakness.
Excessive oppression, however, was restrained, and from the Satlej to
the Indus general peace prevailed. His comparatively mild rule,
though a military despotism, was not unsuited to the martial genius of
his people, and not unpopular, except with tribes whose aristocratic
traditions invited levelling repression from the Sikhs. But based on
the goodwill of his army, it contained no element of permanence, and
after his death in 1839 chaos rapidly ensued.
The results of the Sikh wars — the temporary arrangements made
in 1846 for the administration of the trans-Satlej Panjab, followed by
its complete annexation in 1849 — have been narrated elsewhere. Here
we are only concerned with administrative development.^ The
* Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1849-51, pp. 12-13; H. ofC. Papers, 1849, vol. xli.
go ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., C.P., AND PANJAB
Council of Regency, during its existence in 1846-9, sought to repair
and improve previous indigenous institutions rather than to introduce
novelty; to preserve what order remained, while governing on the
lines of a benevolent Indian ruler. Remedies were applied to crying
evils — an idle and irregularly paid army; general official dishonesty;
the absence of machinery for administering justice. Economy was
enforced ; provisional summary settlements of land-revenue were made
by British officers;^ regular salaries were paid to Indian officials in
place of undefined perquisites; taxation was lightened and simplified
and a budget framed. The administration of justice was entrusted to
respectable persons; while the penal code, reduced to writing, was
rendered more efficient and more humane. Heinous offences were
tried by the council itself and appeals from subordinate authorities
were entertained. European officers were deputed to visit outlying
districts, while in the framing of rules and regulations influential and
intelligent persons were consulted. The development of resources
received attention, and plans for the repair of old and the construc-
tion of new public works were prepared. But the process of restoration
and improvement was rudely interrupted by the second Sikh War.
Annexation afforded a clearer and a wider field for administrative
effort, of which full advantage was taken by the selected body of
exceptionally able officers, civil and military, whom Lord Dalhousie
deputed to the new province, and of whom many had been trained
in the best tradition of the North-Western Provinces. They included
Henry and John Lawrence, John Nicholson, Robert Montgomery,
Herbert Edwardes, Robert Napier, Richard Temple, Donald Macleod,
and many others subsequently famous. It should never be forgotten
that the Panjab was from the first organised as a British province on
a basis of long administrative experience gained in Bengal and the
North-Western Provinces during the previous half-century; an ex-
perience which included serious errors to be avoided as well as notable
successes to be repeated.
Immediately after annexation a Board of Administration consisting
of three members was constituted. Under the governor-general it
exercised plenary authority in all departments of government. ^ The
province was divided into seven, increased in 1850 to eight divisions^
each under a commissioner, and into twenty-four districts, each under
a deputy-commissioner; the districts themselves being further sub-
divided into smaller areas, termed tahsils, each in charge of an Indian
civil officer, designated tahsildar. The non-regulation type of adminis-
tration, at once simple, vigorous, and efficient, was adopted. Land-
revenue organisation was one of the first objects of attention. A regular
settlement was begun immediately after annexation, and was gradually
completed district by district, though many years elapsed before this
* Panjab Sett. Manual, p. 22; Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 541.
* Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1849-51, sect, in; 1882-3, pp. 30-3; 1911-12, pp. 18-20.
THE PANJAB AFTER ANNEXATION 91
could be accomplished in the western frontier districts. In the mean-
time revenue was assessed and collected under short-term and pro-
visional summary settlements. A similar course was followed in the
cis-Satlej districts recently attached to the province. The demands
imposed in these summary settlements/ especially in the last-
mentioned tract, based as they were on the revenue accounts of
the previous regime, were comparatively heavy, but, thanks to the
experience gained in other provinces, the Panjab escaped those harsh
methods of revenue farming and collection which had been so mis-
chievous elsewhere. The subsequent regular settlement was carried
out on the principles which had been previously adopted in the
North-Western Provinces, but subject to certain modifications due to
local conditions. In the Panjab the village communities, often tribal
in their constitution and usually of the so-called zamindari type, were
generally more vigorous and better preserved than in the North-
Western Provinces. It was therefore possible as a rule to accord to
their members the status and rights of peasant proprietors, and to
make a joint settlement with them in place of former revenue farmers,
or usurping officials, or semi-feudal grantees, as in other provinces. ^
Communities analogous to the ryotwari type, where they existed,
were treated by the same method. Previous political and social con-
ditions had discouraged the growth of great landlords with a seignorial
status over village communities. Where it happened to exist, it was
converted, not into proprietary right, but into a right to receive
merely a fixed quit-rent. The policy thus adopted has resulted in the
Panjab being a country mainly of peasant proprietors. In the regular
settlement the right of the state was asserted over the immense areas
of waste land which then lay unoccupied in the trans-Satlej Panjab
and which have since become the scene of extensive colonisation.
A similar course was followed in the large forest areas in the hills.^
Tenant-right received attention, though it was not until some years
later that definite principles were laid down after lengthy controversy.
In the Panjab this right was not so much a relic of a previous quasi-
proprietary position as the result of two facts ; first, that Sikh rulers
made little practical distinction between different grades of status, so
that members as well as non-members of the village community had
often to bear jointly the same burdens; secondly, that established
custom recognised some permanence of tenure in favour of cultivators
who, or whose ancestors, though not included in the circle of the
community, had assisted in founding the village and in clearing waste
land.^ In the first regular settlement officers were given judicial
powers for the determination of rights, and in such work they exercised
1 Panjab Sett. Manual, p. 24; Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 543.
2 Panjab Sett. Manual, pp. ^Qsqq.; Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, ^o^sqq.; Adm. Rep. Panjab,
1849-51, sect. VII, pt I.
^ Panjab Sett. Manual, p. 93; Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 545 sqq.
* Panjab Sett. Manual^ p. 100; Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 703-5.
92 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., C.P., AND PANJAB
a fairly wide equitable discretion, especially in questions of tenant-
right, to which, following the practice of the North-Western Provinces,
they commonly applied the twelve-years' rule. The assessments of
land-revenue were based on general considerations similar to those
previously recognised in the North-Western Provinces, but supple-
mented by close local investigation.^ The task was rendered more
difficult by the entire absence of economic money rents, then quite
unknown in the Panjab. Moderation in assessment was impressed on
all officials from the first, and it has been a salient feature of Panjab
administration ever since. Except in the western districts of the
province, the regular settlements were completed either before or
shortly after the Mutiny.
Strong measures were taken for the maintenance of law and order
and for the suppression of such crimes as thagi, which prevailed to
a limited extent, dacoity and robbery. 2 Civil police, seven thousand
strong, were distributed over the province, on the general lines of the
system of the North-Western Provinces, for the detection and prosecu-
tion of criminals and for watch-and-ward in villages. In his control of
them the deputy-commissioner was assisted by the tahsildars. The civil
police were aided by a strong force of military police, some eight
thousand strong including mounted men, under four European officers
with Indian subordinates. The force furnished guards, patrolled the
country, and helped in the prevention of crime and in the appre-
hension of offenders. Local watchmen were also entertained and paid
by the village communities. Jails were erected in every district. The
province from the Satlej to the Indus was disarmed, some 120,000
weapons of all kinds being surrendered ; and possession or sale of arms
was prohibited except in the trans-Indus area.^ A similar measure
was applied later to the cis-Satlej districts and to the Delhi territory.
The criminal code was based on that in force in the Bengal Pre-
sidency, with needful local modifications.* In 1855 a civil code was
issued which, while not a legal enactment, included much of the
custom and usage current in the province, thus serving as a useful
guide to judicial officers \^ and though the Bengal Regulations were
never in force, it was understood that their spirit should be followed
wherever it was applicable. The administration of the districts now
included in the North-West Frontier Province is dealt with elsewhere;
it largely increased the responsibilities of the new government.
One of its principal duties was to develop the resources and
especially the communications of the province.® A Public Works
^ Panjab Sett. Manual, pp. 25-8; Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 568-72.
* Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1849-51, sect, v; 1851-3, pp. 41-8; 1882-3, P- 32; H.ofC. Papers^
1857-8, XLiii, 75.
' Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1849-51, p. 56; 1882-3, P- 32; H' ofC. Papers, 1849, xli, 75.
* Whitley Stokes, op. cit. i, 2; Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1849-51, p. 63.
^ Adm. Rep. Panjab, 185 1-3, pp. 88, 89.
* Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1849-51, sect. viii.
PANJAB ADMINISTRATION 93
Department, including a branch devoted to irrigation, was formed;
the staff consisting mainly of military officers. A similar step was soon
taken in the North-Western Provinces. At annexation roads of any
kind were practically non-existent: but their construction in all
directions was now systematically undertaken with reference to the
routes of external and internal trade. Few of them were metalled,
though most of them were lined with fine avenues of trees. Of
metalled roads the most important was the main artery between
Lahore and Peshawar, known as the Grand Trunk Road, the last
link in a long chain of similar communications between Calcutta and
Northern India. The development of canal irrigation was an object
of special solicitude.^ From early times water from the numerous
rivers of the Panjab had been utilised for agriculture by means of
simple channels, partly natural, partly artificial, which, starting at a
level higher than the low-water level of the stream, could flow only
in the flood season. Without head-weirs of the modern type to ensure
a perennial supply, and liable to be blocked by deposits of silt, these
crude means had nevertheless served to irrigate considerable areas. 2
Efforts were made soon after annexation to extend and improve these
"inundation" canals, and a good deal was thus accomplished. But
the most important achievement of the early years was the construc-
tion of a perennial canal from the Ravi to irrigate the Bari Doab, the
tract of country lying between that river and the rivers Satlej and
Beas. Now known as the Upper Bari Doab Canal, it was begun in
1 85 1 and opened in 1859. In later years it was greatly improved and
extended, forming the first member of that unique system of irrigation
for which the province is now famous.
Such were some of the activities of the young administration. Other
objects of its attention can only be mentioned — the erection of public
buildings, schools and hospitals, the reform of the local currency, the
suppression of female infanticide, the institution of a rudimentary
municipal system. ^ In 1853, on the abolition of the board, John (later
Lord) Lawrence was appointed chief commissioner as head of the
local administration. Under him were a judicial commissioner and
a financial commissioner, heads respectively of the judicial and revenue
departments ; the former being also head of the police, supervising
education, and controlling local and municipal funds ; an odd assort-
ment of duties, but characteristic of that strenuous period. The cata-
strophe of the Mutiny for a time arrested further progress. In that
great crisis the province, except for a few limited areas, did not waver
in its loyalty to its new rulers ; while the recruitment of some 70,000*
Panjabi and frontier tribesmen under the British standards bore
^ Imp. Gaz. in, 327.
2 Triennial Review, pp. 33, 43; Kaye, op. cit. p. 300.
^ Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1882-3, P- 33-
* Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1856-8, p. 43; Sir G. Aitchison, Lawrence, Oxford, 1892, p. 99.
94 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., G.P., AND PANJAB
eloquent testimony to the high quality of the administrative results
which had been achieved.
Development in the areas latest acquired, the Nagpur state and
Oudh, will be dealt with more conveniently in another chapter. Here
it is sufficient to notice that as a result of the third Maratha War the
former was virtually ruled from 1818 to 1830 by the Resident at
Nagpur, Sir R.Jenkins, during the minority of the raja. His adminis-
tration was broadly on the lines followed later in the Panjab by the
Lahore regency from 1846 to 1849 — the utilisation of native institu-
tions and agency under British supervision, which was mainly directed
to the removal of abuses.^ Little change was made in the revenue
system except that triennial were substituted for the previous annual
settlements and that tenants received protection. At the end of the
minority the raja maintained Sir R. Jenkins's methods until his death
in 1853. Oudh immediately after its annexation in 1856 was placed
under a chief commissioner as a non-regulation province, and a sum-
mary settlement of land-revenue was made.^ Under the previous rule
revenue farmers or managers, who were often also influential local
chiefs, had commonly acquired, under the designation of talukdars^
2L seignorial or landlord status over village communities, and were
therefore in a position to set up a plausible claim to proprietary right.
In many cases it thus became a question whether a settlement should
be made with them or with the subordinate communities.^ Lord
Dalhousie, following the practice of the North-Western Provinces and
of the Panjab, decided in favour of the latter, with the result that the
talukdars were practically ousted from many of their estates, and their
consequent resentment ranged many of them against the British
Government in the great struggle of the Mutiny.
^ R. Jenkins, Report on the Territories of the Raja of Nagpur , Calcutta, 1827, p. 299; Adm.
Rep. Cent. Provs. 1882-3, P- HJ 1911-12, p. 11.
2 Adm. Rep, N.-W. Provs. 1882-3, P- 34-
^ Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, lOi^sqq.; Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs. 1911-12, p. 18.
CHAPTER VI
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
When PIu's act of 1784 extended the control of the Bengal
Government over the minor presidencies of Madras and Bombay to
all points relating to peace as well as to war, it committed the general
direction of domestic policy in British India to men who were liable
to be impressed particularly by conditions in Bengal. ^ Yet the middle
and upper classes of that province have always differed considerably
from the same classes in Upper and Western India. They contain no
martial element, and only a small minority of Muhammadans de-
scended from Central Asian stocks. While the rural masses differ little
intellectually from those in neighbouring provinces, the leading Hindu
castes, Brahmans, Kayesthas (writers), and Vaidyas (physicians),
have always been remarkable for exceptional literary and clerical
ability. They have been quick to grasp opportunities and to assimilate
new ideas. But when Warren Hastings took charge of Bengal in 1 772,
these and all other classes of society had been long depressed by con-
stant wars and tyrannical or chaotic administration. Learning of all
kinds had slunk away into the background. Hastings, however, had
entered the service of the East India Company
with the advantages of a regular classical education, and, with a mind strongly
impressed with the pleasures of literature. The common dialects of Bengal, after
his arrival in that country, soon became familiar to him; and at a period when the
use and importance of the Persian language were scarcely suspected, and when the
want of that grammatical and philological assistance which has facilitated the
labours of succeeding students rendered the attainment of it a task of peculiar
difficulty, he acquired a proficiency in it.^
When appointed governor of Bengal, he lost no time in causing a
manual of Hindu law to be prepared in Sanskrit by Brahman pundits
and translated both into English and into Persian, the language of
the law courts established by the Moghul rulers of the province.
Approached in 1781 by some Calcutta Muhammadans with a request
for the permanent establishment of a "Madrasa" (college) where
young Muslims might acquire knowledge which would fit them for
"the numerous offices of the British Government",^ then largely
monopolised by Hindus, he responded favourably, purchasing a site
out of his own pocket, laying the foundation stone and advising the
directors to assign "the rents of one or more villages" in the neigh-
^ It was not, for instance, until 1859 that a Bombay civil servant (Sir Bartle Frere) was
appointed to the governor-generars council (Martineau, Life of Frere, 1, 295-6).
2 Shore, quoted ap. Jones, Collected Works, n, 1 9.
' Sharp, Selections, i, 8.
96 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
bourhood as an endowment for the new institution. The subjects of
instruction were to be the Muhammadan law and such other sciences
as were taught in Muhammadan schools. The directors accepted
Hastings's recommendations, and reimbursed him for the expense
which he had incurred. The college became known as "the Muham-
madan Madrasa" and was the first state-aided educational institution
in Bengal. Hardly had it been founded when the bench of the Calcutta
Supreme Court received a notable recruit in the person of Sir William
Jones, ^jurist and scholar, the first of the great Orientalists, of those
ardent enthusiasts who have done so much to spread abroad in
Europe appreciation of Asiatic culture and learning. Jones has placed
on record the "inexpressible pleasure" which he felt on approaching
the shores of India; 2 and although his time was short, for he died at
Calcutta in 1 794, he not only translated the laws of Manu and other
famous Sanskrit works into English, but left so deep an impression on
his Brahman friends that some could not restrain their tears when
they spoke of "the wonderful progress which he had made in the
sciences which they professed ".^ With the strong support of Hastings,*
he founded the Bengal Asiatic Society which has since numbered
among its members the great Sanskrit scholar Colebrooke, a civil
servant who rose to be a member of the governor-general's council,
and Horace Hayman Wilson, another famous Orientalist, who lived
to complete Mill's history of British India and to be librarian at the
East India House for more than twenty years. ^ In 1792 Jonathan
Duncan, Resident at Benares, asked and obtained permission to
establish a college in the holy city for the preservation and cultivation
of the laws, literature and religion of the Hindus,® stating that
although learning had always been cultivated at Benares "in numerous
private seminaries", no public institution of the kind proposed had
ever existed. The "permanency of a college" would tend to recover
and collect gradually books still to be met (though in a very dispersed
and imperfect state) of "the most ancient and valuable general learning
and tradition now existing perhaps on any part of the globe". It
would preserve and disseminate a knowledge of the Hindu law and
become "a nursery of the future doctors and expounders thereof to
assist European judges" in administering "its genuine letter and
spirit to the body of the people".
The British Government was sympathetic towards attempts to
revive Indian learning, but entertained no idea of introducing any
system of education. No state system then existed in England; and
even Burke, the Company's most formidable critic, did not consider
^ Hickey, Memoirs, in, 154-5. ^ Duff, Indian Missions, p. 196.
' See the article on Jones in the Dictionary of National Biography, x, 1064-5, and Jones,
op. cit. II, 307.
* Jones, op. cit. 11, 19-28.
* Foster, The East India House, p. 149. Cf. Memorials of Old Haileybury College, pp. 208-22.
* Sharp, op. cit. p. 10. See also History of the Benares Sanskrit College, pp. 1-2.
CHARLES GRANT 97
that either in letters, religion, commerce, or agriculture, had India
need to learn from England.^
Among the Company's civil servants, however, there was one who
thought differently. While serving in the commercial branch from
1773 to 1790 and spending years among the people of an up-country
district of Bengal, Charles Grant became profoundly concerned at a
spectacle which presented certain distressing features, and, in con-
sultation with two friends, prepared proposals for establishing a
Protestant mission in Bengal and Bihar which he forwarded to William
Wilberforce and other Evangelical leaders at home. Retiring from
India with a fortune honestly earned, ^ he sat down to write a treatise
entitled "Observations on the state of society among the Asiatic sub-
jects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to morals, and on the
means of improving it". Soon after his return he had come into
contact with Wilberforce ; and when in 1 793 the Company's charter
came before parliament for renewal, that great philanthropist en-
deavoured to procure the insertion of clauses empowering the court
of directors to send to and maintain in British India "schoolmasters
and persons approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop
of London ' for the religious and moral improvement of the native
inhabitants ' ". The directors, however, objected that the governments
of the three presidencies could not possibly be expected to establish
missionary departments. The Indian people must be left to follow
their own systems of faith and morals. The House of Commons agreed ;
and Wilberforce temporarily abandoned his proposals, while Grant
returned to his treatise.^ He was elected to the court of directors, and
in 1797 laid it before that body, asking for its reception as "a business
paper ". In powerful and trenchant language, animated, as a Muham-
madan historian has pointed out,* by the purest desire of bringing
about a "happier" state of things, he gave his impressions of social
and moral conditions among Hindus and Muhammad ans in Bengal.
The evils which he enumerated, the position of women, many of whom
were doomed "to joyless confinement during life and a violent pre-
mature death", the "perpetual abasement and unlimited subjection"
in which the lower orders of Hindus were kept by the Brahmanical
system and religion, were the results of dense and widespread ignorance
among the people, and could be removed only by education, first of
all by education in English, a key which would open to the people
"a world of new ideas". First would come knowledge of the Chris-
tian religion which would instil new views of duty. Every branch
^ See his speech on Fox's East India Bill. In another passage, however, he charges his
countrymen with having erected neither churches, hospitals, palaces nor schools in India.
2 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, i, 306, 377, 475.
^ It is contained in Pari. Papers, East India, vol. x, fourth part, 181 2-1 3, pp. 5-1 12, and
was reprinted by parliament twenty years later. See Reports, Committees, E.I.C. 183 1-2 (4),
vol. VIII.
* Mahmud, History, p. 8. On page 3 the historian describes it as "a most valuable essay
on the moral, intellectual and political conditions of India at that time".
c H I VI 7
98 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
of natural philosophy might follow in time, above all the principles of
mechanics and their application to agriculture and the useful arts.
Invention was torpid. The people needed mental quickening. Custom
was their strongest law. The path which the first passenger had marked
over the soft soil was trodden so undeviatingly in all its curves by
every succeeding passenger, that when it was perfectly beaten, it had
only the width of a single track. Even if the advantages to be derived
from the spread of Christianity were progressive and partial, they
would conduce toward the outward prosperity and internal peace of
Hindu society. The change would correct *' those sad disorders which
have been described and for which no other remedy has been pro-
posed, nor is in the nature of things to be found". Grant advised
the establishment by government of free schools for teaching English
in various parts of the province and the substitution of English for
Persian in judicial proceedings, in the administration of the revenue
and other business. He discussed political objections to his suggestions
and ended with the assertion that the English language was the best
channel for the spread of general enlightenment. By planting our
language, our knowledge, our opinions and our religion in our Asiatic
dominions we would put a great work beyond the risk of contingencies ;
we would probably wed the inhabitants of those territories to this
country; but at any rate we would do an act of strict duty to them and
a lasting service to mankind. If, however, English were not employed,
the country languages might be used to spread abroad the truths of
Christianity in which all "the other proposed meliorations" were
involved.
Although no Orientalist himself. Grant greatly admired Jones's
genius and depth of learning.^ But his own experience of India was
not that of a scholar and a judge at headquarters. He had lived for
years among the masses in the heart of Bengal. While he was gradually
building up influence in London, an even more remarkable man was
preparing to take a hand in the affairs of that province.
In 1793 William Carey, ex-shoemaker and Baptist missionary,
arrived at Calcutta, without a licence from the directors, resolved to
preach Christianity in the native tongues at any cost. Throughout a
considerable part of the eighteenth century Lutheran missionaries in
Southern India had been looking after the schools established by the
Company for the children of the Portuguese, Tamil and Eurasian
Christians employed in their service. Free passages to India on the
Company's ships had been given to these men. Schools for Indian
boys established by Christian Swartz, a famous Lutheran mis-
sionary, were subsidised by the Madras Government with the approval
of the directors. 2 Throughout his career Swartz had enjoyed their
favour. Carey, however, his companion Thomas, and other Baptist
missionaries who subsequently joined them, were compelled to find
^ Morris, Life of Grant, p. 83. * Penny, Church in Madras, i, 613.
SERAMPUR AND DAVID HARE 99
their way to Bengal in foreign ships, and began their work oppressed
by grave financial difficulties and unsheltered by official authority,
although Carey and Thomas owed their start to George Udny, a civil
servant who eventually became member of the governor-generaFs
council. The missionaries finally established themselves at Serampur,
a Danish settlement sixteen miles north of Calcutta, set up schools
for European and Indian boys, started a paper manufactory and a
printing-press, and poured forth from the latter translations of the
books of the Bible into various Indian languages. Carey was a linguistic
genius and a diligent Orientalist as well as a great missionary. His
noble character and single-minded piety won friends and favour in
all quarters and deeply impressed Lord Wellesley, who appointed
him Bengali lecturer in his new college for young civil servants. His
chief coadjutors were Marshman, who had been master in a Baptist
school, and Ward, an ex-printer of Hull. So persistent was the energy
and so ardent was the spirit of these three men that in spite of many
difficulties and set-backs, they not only gained converts and attracted
pupils, but by their translations of the books of the Bible, which were
widely diffused, they assisted in laying the foundations of Bengali
prose literature.^ Their whole enterprise, conducted with remarkable
financial ability, produced large profits which went to the common
cause.
Another pioneer in education was David Hare, a watchmaker who
settled at Calcutta in 1 800 and has been described by Lord Ronald-
shay as " one of those persons disabled by temperament from accepting
the dogma of religion but compelled by his heart to lead an essentially
Christian life".^ Hare was a rationalist, and in the words on his
tombstone, which is still visited by Indians on the anniversary of his
death,
adopted for his own the country of his sojourn and cheerfully devoted the remainder
of his life with unwearying zeal and benevolence to one pervading and darling
object, in which he spared no personal trouble, money or influence, viz. the educa-
tion and moral improvement of the natives of Bengal.
He studied Bengali, found it deficient for his purposes and conceived
the idea of founding a school for the instruction of young Indians in
Western literature and science.
In 181 1, while Grant in England and Carey and Hare in Bengal
were searching after new courses of education, Lord Minto and his
colleagues, who included the great Sanskrit scholar Colebrooke, were
attributing the evils of the time to the decay of the indigenous learning
of the country. The government was already spending money on the
maintenance of students of Sanskrit learning at Nuddea and on the
support of the Hindu College at Benares. More money, they said, was
^ Marshman, Carey, Marshman and Ward; Bishop Whitehead, Indian Problems, p. 144; and
Thompson, Rabindranath Tagore, p. 6.
^ Heart of Aryavarta, pp. ij-iS.
7-2
100 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
required for each, and more colleges must be established for the en-
couragement of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic literature. The Muham-
madan Madrasa at Calcutta must be reformed. Some additional
expense should be incurred with a view to a "restoration of learning".
Minto had been personally generous to the Serampur Press, ^ and his
government subscribed 10,000 rupees to assist the printing of the
Scriptures in the Malay language; but such education as was going
on in India was almost entirely independent of their patronage. In
the background there were teachers and schools in no small number
not only in Bengal but also in other provinces. Illuminating informa-
tion on this subject is contained in the reports^ of William Adam on
vernacular education in Bengal and Bihar and may be summarised
before we go farther, for conditions in the capital province were
roughly similar to conditions elsewhere.^
Indigenous education was private or public, elementary or higher,
administered at home to boys and exceedingly rarely to girls, or
administered to boys alone in schools which, in spite of serious defects,*
were maintained and managed by the people themselves. In Bengal
and Bihar the rudiments of learning were taught in patshalas by school-
masters who generally belonged to the Kayestha or writer caste. The
pupils were generally Kayesthas or Brahmans but sometimes belonged
to the trading or land-holding classes; they were seldom Muham-
madans. The teachers, who were poorly remunerated by presents,
fees or perquisites, sometimes employed manuscripts but never text-
books, reciting religious and mythological stories or rhymed arith-
metical rules to pupils who learnt by rote and were kept in order by
primitive methods of discipline which sometimes produced retaliation.
The patshalas were not patronised by the well-to-do, who preferred to
have their sons taught at home.
Scholastic or higher education was Persian, Arabic or Sanskrit. The
Persian schools {maktabs) were attended both by Muhammadans and
by such Hindus as were attracted by the advantages to be gained from
acquaintance with the language of the law courts. Instruction was
given in Persian literature and grammar, in penmanship and in
arithmetic. Arabic schools were either "formal" Arabic, intended
exclusively for instruction in the formal or ceremonial reading of the
Koran, or "learned" Arabic. The learned schools (madrasas) were
intimately connected with the Persian schools. The Aiabic teacher
taught Persian also to his pupils. The average duration of study was
eleven or twelve years, and the students might be either boys or men.
The courses, varying from one school to another, included rhetoric,
logic, grammar, Muhammadan law, Euclid, branches of natural
* Lord Minto in India, pp. 71-2.
* Dated 1835-6-8. Copious extracts are quoted by Duff in an article on "Indigenous
education in Bengal and Bihar", Calcutta Review, 1844. See also Adam, Reports, Long, 1868.
' For an account of indigenous education in the Panjab sec Leitner's Report of 1883.
* Adam, op. cit. pp. 19-20.
INDIGENOUS SCHOOLS loi
philosophy and the perusal of treatises on metaphysics. There was no
particular system of organisation or discipline. The teachers were
remunerated by presents, fees and other means, at low rates. Printed
books were not to be seen, but manuscripts were in constant use. In
Bengal and Bihar there were no Urdu schools for Muslims corre-
sponding to the Bengali and Hindu schools for the Hindus.
In the Sanskrit academies {tols) the Hindu religion, philosophies,
law and logic, were taught to pupils who were mostly Brahmans but
sometimes belonged to the Vaidya or physician caste. Some tols were
endowed, but most were established by individual Brahmans who
were known as gurus (teachers). A guru would proclaim himself ready
to instruct in a particular branch of learning and would gather round
him a band of disciples {chelas) whom he would teach in his own house,
or a friend's house, or a school-house, or in the open air after the
fashion of ancient India. ^ His remuneration would not be fees but
gifts from admirers, or pupils or parents of pupils. The pupils had
previously been taught at home to read, write and do small sums.
There were larger tols for the inculcation of particular branches of
Sanskrit learning, either medical, philosophical, mythological, astro-
logical, Tantric or Vedantic, where the courses of study occupied
years.
Of the gurus Adam drew a vivid picture i^
I saw men not only unpretending, but plain and simple in their manners, and
though seldom, if ever, offensively coarse, yet reminding me of the very humblest
classes of English and Scottish peasantry, living constantly half-naked, inhabiting
huts which if we connect moral consequences with physical causes, might be sup-
posed to have the effect of stunting the growth of their minds, or in which only the
most contracted minds might be supposed to have room to dwell — and yet several
of these men are adepts in the subtleties of the profoundest grammar of what is
probably the most philosophical language in existence ; not only practically skilled
in all the niceties of its usage, but also in the principles of its structure ; familiar
with all the varieties and applications of their natural laws and literature, and
indulging in the abstrusest and most interesting disquisitions in logical and ethical
philosophy. They are in general shrewd, discriminating and mild in their
demeanour.
There were no schools for girls ; but land-holders sometimes in-
structed their daughters in writing and accounts with a view to
rendering them less helpless in the event of early widowhood. It was
difficult, however, to obtain from any land-holder an admission that
his daughter was literate.
"A feeling", writes Adam, "is alleged to exist in the majority of Hindu females,
principally cherished by the women and not discouraged by the men, that a girl
taught to write and read will soon after marriage become a widow, an event which
is regarded as nearly the worst misfortune that can befall the sex, and the belief is
"The study of Sanskrit grammar", Adam observes, "occupies about seven years,
lexicology about two, literature about ten, logic about thirteen, and mythology about four."
Trevelyan, Education of the People of India, p. 109.
Adam, op. cit. p. 119. He says that "the Pundits are of all ages, from twenty-five to
eighty-two".
I02 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
also generally entertained that intrigue is facilitated by a knowledge of letters on
the part of females The Muhammadans participate in all the prejudices of
Hindus against the instruction of their female offspring, besides that a large majority
of them are in the very lowest grade of poverty, and are thus unable if they were
willing to give education to their children."^
If, however, there was extremely little education of girls in either of
the two great communities, the education of boys of particular classes
was considered eminently desirable by the learned classes of both, and
its mainly religious character was often emphasised by a preliminary
ceremony or act of worship. ^ Except, however, for simple arithmetic
and ability to read and write, it was directed to teaching Sanskrit to
Hindus and Persian or Arabic to Muhammadans; the masses were
for the most part, by general consent, consigned to ignorance, the
prejudice against their instruction being "nearly as strong and as
general in their own minds as in the minds of others".^ There was
no promise of progress; and a new school of Hindus was springing up
in Calcutta wJio were longing to escape from time-honoured restraints
and long-standing evils. The boldest of these was a Brahman named
Ram Mohan Roy, who burst out with a scathing denunciation of the
popular Hinduism of his day :
I have never ceased to contemplate with the strongest feelings of regret the
obstinate system of idolatry, inducing, for the sake of propitiating supposed deities,
the violation of humane and social feelings. And this in various instances, but more
especially in the dreadful acts of self-immolation and the immolation of the nearest
relations, under the delusion of conforming to sacred religious rites.*
When in 181 3 the East India Company's charter came once more
before parliament for consideration, Minto's views regarding educa-
tion were laid before the Commons. Wilberforce and Grant then sat
in the House. Both belonged to the famous Clapham brotherhood;
and Grant's influence was strong on the court of directors. Speaking
at great length and quoting from Grant's Observations, but now dis-
carding all notion of government missionary establishments, Wilber-
force said that mission work must be left to "the spontaneous zeal of
individual Christians controuled by the discretion of the government ".
There was no idea of proceeding by "methods of compulsion and
authority". But mission work should not be substantially and in
effect prevented. Parliament should "lay the ground for the promo-
tion of education and the diffusion of useful knowledge ". Christianity
was the appropriate remedy for evils which he enumerated. The way
for its reception should be made straight.^ Moved largely by his
forcible pleading, parliament declared that such measures ought to
be adopted as might lead to " the introduction into India of useful
knowledge and religious and moral improvements", and transferred
the ultimate power of licensing persons desirous of proceeding to that
* Adam, op. cit. p. 132. " Calcutta Review, 1867, xlv, 420.
' Adam, ob. cit. p. 254. * Quoted ap. Anderson and Subedar, p. 1 7.
' Hansard, 1813, xxvi, 832, 853, 1071, 1076.
CHARTER ACT OF 1813 103
country "for the purpose of accomplishing these benevolent designs"
from the directors to the Board of Control, stipulating that the
authority of the local governments respecting the intercourse of
Europeans with the interior of the country should be preserved, and
that the principles of the British Government on which the natives of
India had always relied for the free exercise of their religion "must
be inviolably maintained". At a late stage of the debates a clause
was added which allowed the governor-general to direct that out of
the territorial rents, revenue and profits of British India, after de-
fraying the expenses of the military, civil and commercial establish-
ments and meeting the interest of the debt, "a sum of not less than
one lakh of rupees" should be set apart and applied to
the revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement of the learned
natives of India and for the introduction or promotion of a knowledge of the
sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories in India.
The author of this clause was " Bobus " Smith who had been advocate-
general in Calcutta. ^ His draft, slightly modified by the president of
the Board of Control, passed through parliament without opposition.
It is perfectly clear that by " the sciences " he meant Western sciences. ^
As the directors said, addressing the governor-general on 3 June, 1814,
the clause presented two distinct propositions for consideration. They
went on, however, to give vague and inconclusive instructions.
Learned Hindus should be left to continue their custom of teaching
in their homes and should be stimulated by honorary marks of dis-
tinction and pecuniary assistance. There were Sanskrit tracts on the
virtues of plants and drugs which might prove useful to the European
practitioner ; and there were treatises on astronomy and mathematics
which, although they might not add new light to European science,
might become
links of communication between the natives and the gentlemen in our service, who
are attached to the Observatory and the department of engineers, and by such
intercourse the natives might gradually be led to adopt modern improvements in
those and other sciences.^
The self-supporting character of the indigenous schools attracted
warm approbation, and the teachers were recommended to the
"protection" of the government. Enquiries were made as to their
present state. The governor-general was asked to submit for con-
sideration any plan calculated to promote the object in view. But the
instructions were hazy, and the governor-general's mind was more
seriously occupied by the Nepalese, Pindari and Maratha wars. So
beyond writing a minute in favour of improving indigenous education,
and patronising a Calcutta textbook society to supply the wants of
^ Cf. Hickey, op. cit. iv, 275.
2 Hansard, xxvi, 1087-8, Bills Public (2), Sessions 24 November-22 July, 1812-13 (11),
p. 1 197; Howell, Education in British India, pp. 4-5; Mill and Wilson, History of British India^
vn, 397. * Sharp, op. cit. i, 24.
104 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
a growing circle of schools, Lord Hastings did little. The society owed
its origin to a pamphlet published by Marshman, the Serampur
missionary,^ and was very liberally supported by the European com-
munity of Calcutta.
More missionaries, representing various societies, opened more
schools. David Hare persuaded Sir Hyde East, Chief Justice, and
other leading Europeans and Indians to establish a college for the
tuition of sons of " respectable " Hindu parents in the English and
Indian languages and in European and Asiatic science and literature.
The college was first known as the Vidyalaya (home of learning), and
afterwards as the Hindu College; finally it became "the Presidency
College". Its teaching encouraged free thought in religion with
results which were not altogether happy. ^ In establishing it Hare was
assisted by Ram Mohan Roy, a Kulin Brahman, who has been called
by a distinguished Bengali^ "the first brilliant product of European
influence in India". Born in 1772 of a well-to-do family, he was
deeply read in Sanskrit and possessed some acquaintance with Persian
and Arabic. In 1790 he published a pamphlet condemning the
"idolatrous religion of the Hindus", which must, he urged, be re-
stored to its original purity. He laid before his countrymen "genuine
translations of parts of their scripture, which inculcated not only the
enlightened worship of one God, but the purest principles of morality ".
In 1805 he entered the Company's service, and, assisted by John
Digby, acquired a wide knowledge of English literature.* On retiring
from government service in 18 14, he settled in Calcutta and devoted
himself to the cause of social, religious and educational reform. In
1 81 8 he began a vigorous campaign against sati, and later, supported
by others, he struck a shrewd blow in the cause of Western education.
Before Lord Hastings's departure in 1823, grants had been given by
the government to two societies formed to promote vernacular educa-
tion and improve the indigenous schools ;5 and afterwards, a "Com-
mittee of Public Instruction" composed of civil servants,* with
Horace Hayman Wilson, the Orientalist, as secretary, was appointed
* Howell, op. cit. p. 12; Mahmud, op. cit. p. 25 ; Tzvelve Indian Statesmen^ P- 230 ; Marshman,
op. cit. pp. 278-9.
' See the evidence of J. W. Sherer, 19 July, 1832, paras. 1915-2252, Minutes of Evidence
before Select Committee, i. Report Committees, E.I.C. 183 1-2 (5), vol. ix; also the Heart of
Aryavarta, p. 46.
* Dutt, Literature of Bengal, pp. 137, 139, 147.
* Originally he had conceived a strong aversion to British rule in India but afterwards
gave up "this prejudice" on the conviction that British rule would conduce "more speedily
and surely to the amelioration of his countrymen". See Max Miiller's quotation, Bio-
graphical Essay, p. 47.
' The School-book and School Societies. The latter was guided by a managing com-
mittee of sixteen Europeans and eight Indians. David Hare was secretary. It distributed
books and examined and superintended certain schools.
* Howell, op. cit. p. 14. The committee were bidden to suggest such measures as it might
appear expedient to adopt, with a view to "the better instruction of the people, and the
introduction of useful knowledge, including the arts and sciences of Europe". See History
of the Benares Sanskrit College, pp. 50-3.
RAM MOHAN ROY 105
by Adam, Hastings's temporary successor, and entrusted with the
disbursement of the greater part of the annual one lakh grant. Arrears
were paid in; and the committee prepared to organise a Sanskrit
College which the government had decided to open in Calcutta.
A college on Western lines was being gradually established by the
Serampur missionaries, under the patronage of the king of Denmark
and the governor-general, "for the instruction of Asiatic, Christian
and other youths in Western literature and European science", while
"Bishop's College", another missionary institution, had been founded
at Calcutta in 1820 by means of subscriptions raised in England.^ In
1823 ^ college had been founded and endowed liberally at Agra by
a certain pandit Gangadhar without any pecuniary assistance from
the government. Progress was in the air ; but hardly had the members
of the new committee assembled when they were called on to consider
a petition, addressed to Lord Amherst, by Ram Mohan Roy. Its most
notable passages were these :
"When this seminary of learning" (the new Sanskrit College) "was proposed,
we understood that the government in England had ordered a considerable sum
of money to be annually devoted to the instruction of its Indian subjects. We were
filled with sanguine hopes that this sum would be laid out in employing European
gentlemen of talents and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics,
natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy and other useful sciences which the nations
of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection that has raised them above the
inhabitants of other parts of the world.. . .We now find that the government are
establishing a Sanskrit school under Hindoo pundits to impart such knowledge as
is already current in India. . . .The pupils will here acquire what was known two
thousand years ago, with the addition of vain and empty subtilties since produced
by speculative men, such as is commonly taught in all parts of India. The Sanskrit
language, so difficult that almost a lifetime is necessary for its perfect acquisition,
is well known to have been for ages a lamentable check on the diffusion of know-
ledge; and the learning concealed under this almost impervious veil is far from
sufficient to reward the labour of acquiring it. If it had been intended to keep the
British nation in ignorance of real knowledge, the Baconian philosophy would not
have been allowed to displace the system of the schoolmen, which was the best
calculated to perpetuate ignorance. In the same manner the Sanskrit system of
education would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness, if such
had been the policy of the British legislature. But as the improvement of the native
population is the object of the government, it will consequently promote a more
liberal and enlightened system of instruction, embracing mathematics, natural
philosophy, chemistry and anatomy, with other useful sciences which may be
accomplished with the sum proposed, by employing a few gentlemen of talents and
learning educated in Europe, and providing a college furnished with the necessary
books, instruments and other apparatus."^
It does not appear that this petition produced any immediate im-
pression, but it certainly bore fruit later on.
There were other progressive Indians who thought with Ram
Mohan Roy. Bishop Heber's journals and correspondence throw con-
siderable light on currents of opinion at this time. In a letter dated
Calcutta, October, 1823, he remarked on the friendly attitude of
^ Whitehead, op. cit. pp. 166-7. ^ Sharp, op. cit. pp. 99-101.
io6 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
Hindus and Muhammadans towards mission schools, which, however,
were very rarely attended by Muslim children. No objection was
made to the use of the Bible as a class-book provided that the teachers
did not urge their pupils to eat what would break their caste, or be
baptised, or "curse their country's gods". Twenty schools had re-
cently been established by Church of England missionaries. In
December, 1823, he observed the increasing tendency "to imitate the
English in everything". This had already led to important results and
would lead to still more important results in future. Many wealthy
Indians spoke English fluently and were tolerably read in English
literature. In the Bengali papers, of which there were two or three, ^
politics were canvassed with a bias to Whiggism. Among the lower
orders the same feeling was visible in a growing neglect of caste, and
in an anxiety to learn and speak English, which, if properly encouraged,
might in fifty years "make our language what Oordoo (Hindustani)
is at present ".2 In 1824 Heber visited the Benares Sanskrit College,
and after attending a lecture on astronomy wondered that such
rubbish should be taught in a government college.^
The Committee of Public Instruction started with a credit of arrears
of the government grant, but even so, suffered from narrowness of
means. In the year 1824 the sum which could be spared for the Bengal
Presidency was only £19,970. They decided to spend their money
"on the best means of improving the education of the more re-
spectable members of Indian society 'especially those who make
letters their profession'". This they attempted to do by ignoring the
indigenous schools and by printing in Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic,
both original works and translations of such books as Hutton's
Mathematics, Croker's Land Surveying and Bridge's Algebra. They
further provided "literary endowments" for promising students
of Indian classical literature, attached English classes to certain
Orientalist colleges and started a few schools for teaching English.
In fact they endeavoured to carry out the vague monitions of the
directors, but soon found their path beset by eager applicants for the
means of instruction in English. The situation has been described in
these words by Charles Trevelyan, a young civil servant, one of their
number who subsequently rose to high distinction:
Upwards of 3 1 ,000 English books were sold by the school-book society in the
course of two years while the committee did not dispose of Arabic and Sanskrit
volumes enough in three years to pay the expense of keeping them for two months,
to say nothing of the printing expenses. . . .Among other signs of the times a petition
was presented to the committee by a number of young men who had been brought
up at the Sanskrit college, pathetically representing that, notwithstanding the long
and elaborate course of study which they had gone through, they had little prospect
of bettering their condition ; that the indifference with which they were generally
^ The first Bengali newspaper — the Samachar Darpan (mirror of news) — was issued from
the Serampur Press on 31 May, 1818 (Marshman, op. cit. pp. 280-1).
* Heber, Narrative and LetUrs, n, 306-7. ' Idem, i, 295-6.
THE ORIENTALIST CONTROVERSY 107
regarded by their countrymen left them no hope of assistance from them, and that
they therefore trusted that the government, which had made them what they were,
would not abandon them to destitution and neglect. The English classes which had
been tacked on to the Sanskrit and other oriental colleges had entirely failed in
their object. The boys had not time to go through an English in addition to an
oriental, course; and the study which was secondary was naturally neglected. The
translations into Arabic, also, appeared to have made as little impression upon the
few who knew that language, as upon the mass of the people who were entirely
unacquainted with it.^
Faced with such representations, the committee split into halves,
the Orientalist and older party and the English, or younger, party ._
The first wished to continue the policy of "letting the natives pursue
their present course of instruction, and of endeavouring to engraft
European science thereon". The second desired to spend no more
money on bounties to students of the Indian classical languages or
on printing Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian books, but to devote all
available funds to conveying to Indians, through the medium of
English, the literary and scientific information necessary for a liberal
education. Although for some time the knowledge so conveyed would
be confined to a limited circle, it would soon penetrate to the outer
community through the channel of a new vernacular literature. This
doctrine became famous as "the filtration theory". Its advocates
took inadequate account of the rigidity of Indian caste and occupa-
tional distinctions. Neither party proposed to do anything for the
indigenous schools, and both agreed that the vernaculars "contained
neither the literary nor the scientific information necessary for a
liberal education ".2 Bengal in fact stood at a parting of the ways.
We must now briefly review events in Bombay and Madras. In the
early years of the nineteenth century these presidencies greatly
expanded and were fortunate enough to obtain as their governors two
remarkable men who devoted much attention to education. Both
presidencies had their own indigenous schools which roughly re-
sembled those of Bengal and Bihar. In Bombay, where indigenous
schools were far rarer than in Bengal,^ Mountstuart Elphinstone
obtained the sanction of the directors to the payment on a reduced
scale of the Dakshina allowances formerly distributed by order of the
Peshwas to Brahmans of distinguished learning in the Hindu scrip-
tures, selected after examinations held in the presence of the Poona
court. The money was eventually devoted to the establishment of
a Sanskrit College at Poona. Elphinstone was desirous of diffusing
"a rational education which by removing prejudices and communi-
cating British principles would pave the way for the employment of
natives in the higher branches of the public service". He strongly
deprecated any admixture of religion with state education. He aimed
^ Trevelyan, op. cit. p. lo.
* Trevelyan, op. cit. p. 2 1 .
^ Elphinstone observed of these: "Reading is confined to Brahmans, Banyans, and such
of the agricultural classes as have to do with accounts" (Adam, op. cit. p. 268).
io8 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
at encouraging, improving, and increasing schools for vernacular
education and at establishing schools for the purpose of teaching
English to those disposed to pursue it as a classical language and
" a means of acquiring knowledge of European discoveries ". He con-
templated the preparation of books on moral and physical sciences
in the vernacular and "standard examinations" for public employ-
ment.
"If there be a wish", he wrote, "to contribute to the abolition of the horrors of
self-immolation and of infanticide, and ultimately to the destruction of superstition,
it is scarcely necessary to prove that the only means of success is the diffusion of
knowledge."
Before he resigned office, an English school, an engineering institution,
and a medical school were opened in Bombay, and an English class
was added to the Sanskrit College at Poona. The famous Elphinstone
College represents subscriptions contributed in honour of his name
by "princes, chieftains and gentlemen connected with the West of
India as an endowment for three professors of the English language
and of European arts and sciences ".^ His successor. Sir John Malcolm,
recorded a minute in 1828 which expressed anxiety for the diffusion
of instruction which would open the road to wider employment of
Indians in posts of greater trust and responsibility. But for this
purpose, Malcolm considered, no knowledge of English was necessary.
"The acquisition of that would occupy a period required for other
studies and pursuits." It was, however, essential that aspiring Indians
should have the advantage of translations from English of scientific
works and of books which would enable them to understand English
principles of administration.
In Madras Sir Thomas Munro started enquiries in 1823 which
showed that among a population estimated to number 12,850,941
there was one school to every 1 000 ; but only a very few females were
taught in schools.
"The state of education has", he minuted, "been better in earlier times; but
for the last century it does not appear to have undergone any other change than
what arose from the number of schools diminishing in one place and increasing in
another, in consequence of the shifting of the population from war or other causes.
The great number of schools has been supposed to contribute to the keeping of
education in a low state, because it does not give a sufficient number of scholars
to secure the services of able teachers."
He commented on the poor quality and general ignorance of the
teachers. 2 He was inclined to assist indigenous schools in certain
cases, but not to interfere with them, and was anxious to establish
a "normal" school in a central place for training teachers as well as
two government schools in every district, one for Hindus and one for
* Pari. Papers, E.T.C. 1832, general, App. i, p. 469.
' Sharp, op. cit. i, 73-4. It is clear from a letter from Munro to Canning that he also
contemplated the extension of a knowledge of English literature among the Hindus.
Gleig, Life of Munro y n, 186.
BENTINGK 109
Muhammadans. But he died in 1827; and his scheme did not com-
mend itself to the directors, who had now become anxious to have at
their disposal "a body of natives qualified by their habits and acquire-
ments to take a larger share and occupy higher positions in the civil
administration of their country than had hitherto been the practice".
The Madras scheme dissolved; but in that presidency a colloquial
knowledge of English was more commonly found than in Bengal.
Several distinct languages were spoken there, and English had been
largely adopted as a common medium of intercourse. The mis-
sionaries too were busy. Their activities in the whole educational field
induced Charles Metcalfe to observe in 1834, when quitting the
governor-general's council on promotion: "They seem destined by
almighty Providence to be the chief instruments for improving and
enlightening the inhabitants of this country through the means of
education and moral instruction".^
In the year 1828 Lord William Cavendish Bentinck became
governor-general. A Whig in politics, he was a courageous and
zealous reformer. After careful investigation he summarily forbade
sati against the advice not only of Horace Hayman Wilson, the most
prominent Orientalist, but also of Ram Mohan Roy. Again despite
Orientalist advice to the contrary, he established a new medical
college for training Indian students entirely on Western lines. ^ He
further meditated reforms in education, but decided first to obey the
old orders of 18 14 and obtain definite information about the in-
digenous schools. Unfortunately, however, he delayed action till
January, 1835,^ the very year of his departure; and in the meantime
the differences between the two parties on the Committee of Public
Instruction had come to a head. The English party had been sup-
ported in Calcutta by a forceful recruit in the person of Alexander
Duff, a Scotch missionary who, arriving in India in 1829, had opened
a secondary school, with the assistance of Ram Mohan Roy, and had
already attracted numerous Hindu pupils. Duff urged vehemently
that not only was Sanskrit unadaptable as a medium of modern
education, but that, by an ordinance reckoned to be divine, three-
fourths of the people, consisting of the mixed and lower classes, were
forbidden the study of it.
"There are", he argued, "scarcely any European works translated into Sanskrit;
and even if there were, every term in that sacred tongue is Hnked inseparably with
some idea, or sentiment, or deduction of Hinduism which is a stupendous system
of error; . . .whereas in the very act of acquiring English, the mind, in grasping the
import of new terms, is perpetually brought into contact with new truths and ideas
so that by the time that the language has been mastered, the student must be tenfold
less the child of pantheism, idolatry and superstition than before."*
^ Kaye, Life of Metcalfe, ii, 229. Cf. Mahmud, op. cit. p. 39.
2 Article, "Hindu Medicine and Medical Education", Calcutta Review, 1866, xui,
106-25.
* Article by Duff on "Indigenous education in Bengal and Bihar," Calcutta Review, 1844.
Gf. Adam, op. cit. pp. 10-13. * Paton, Life of Duffy p. 66.
no EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
Unlike Carey, Duff was no Orientalist, but he took pains to learn Ben-
gali and arranged that his pupils should study their mother-tongue.
These, then, were the issues which pressed for decision at Calcutta
in the early 'thirties.
(a) Should anything be done for mass-education; or should it be
left to unaided indigenous schools?
(b) Should all idea of grafting the modern learning of the West on
the ancient learning of the East be abandoned as impracticable?
(c) Should the filtration theory be adopted and all available funds
be devoted to advancing Western knowledge among the upper classes
through the medium of English? No one at Calcutta argued that the
Bengal vernaculars would serve as a medium, although the govern-
ments of Bombay and Madras were disposed to use their own very
different vernaculars for the diffusion of general knowledge. The
Calcutta Government, too, had recently substituted vernaculars for
Persian in the law courts of the Bengal Presidency. ^
The filtration theory and the virtual supersession of the classical
languages by English were advocated by advanced Hindus in
Calcutta, by the followers of Hare and Ram Mohan Roy, by Duff
and his missionary supporters, and by "the English party" on the
Committee of Public Instruction. It is important to notice that the
strongest influences in bringing this "English party" into existence
were the petition of Ram Mohan Roy and the practical experience of
the committee. In this way a policy was shaped which contemplated
the eventual use of the vernaculars for the diffusion of Western know-
ledge, but the immediate employment of English for this purpose,
and of English alone. It commended itself to the directors who,
from motives of economy as well as for reasons of policy, wished to
see a substantial contingent of Western-educated Indians in the
public services. 2 Their interest in indigenous schools had long since
evaporated; and on 8 February, 1829, they had reminded the
governor-general that the one lakh grant was to be placed at the
disposal not of one alone, but of all three presidencies, and that it was
only to be allotted "in the event of there being a surplus revenue after
defraying all the expenses of government".^
Ram Mohan Roy had gone to England in 1830, where he was
received with honour and gave evidence on Indian affairs before a
select committee of the House of Commons ; but, to the bitter loss of
his country, he died at Bristol in 1833.* In the same year parliament,
* See Prinsep's Diary, ap. Sharp, op. cit. i, 133. It appears, however, from circular 220
of the nizamat adalat dated 27 January, 1837, that while the dep>ositions of parties or
witnesses were to be taken down in the languages in which they were delivered, Persian
translations were to be annexed to the records if the latter were called for by the nizamat
court {Circular orders of the Calcutta Nizamat Adawlat, 1846, p. 268).
* Dispatch, 29 September, 1830.
* Howell, op. cit. p. 20. Cf. Mahmud, op. cit. p. 47.
* See The Last Days of Ram Mohan Roy, especially pp. 90 and 94, also Reports, Com'
mittees, E.I.C. 183 1-2 (4), viii, 391.
MAGAULAY iii
after prolonged enquiry, decided when renewing the charter of the
East India Company to dissociate that body altogether from trade,
to add a "legal member" to the governor-general's council, and to
declare that no native of India would in future be debarred from
office or employment by reason of religion, place of birth, descent or
colour.^ On lo December, 1834, the directors informed Bentinck's
government that every effort must be made to enable natives of India
to compete for the public service with fair chance of success, "whether
by conferring on them the advantages of education or by diffusing
on them the treasures of science, knowledge and moral culture".
In the autumn of 1834 Thomas Babington Macaulay, who had been
appointed to the legal membership of the governor-general's council,
arrived at Calcutta and was appointed president of the Committee of
Public Instruction, which he found hopelessly divided between the
Orientalist and the English parties. The Orientalists had lost a strong
champion in H. H. Wilson, who had left India in January, 1833.
Macaulay declined to take an active part in its proceedings until the
government had passed judgment on the main issue in dispute ; but
on 2 February, 1835, he presented a lengthy minute to Bentinck in
support of the English party. In some passages he poured scorn on
Oriental literature, of which he knew nothing. In others, while *^
asserting that he would strictly respect all existing interests, he pro-
posed not only to stop the printing of Arabic and Sanskrit books, but y
to abolish the Muhammadan Madrasa which had been founded by
Warren Hastings and the Calcutta Sanskrit College. No stipends, he
urged, should in future be given to students at the Benares and Delhi
colleges. The funds thus set free would be given to the Vidyalaya at
Calcutta and to the establishment of English schools in the principal
cities of Upper India. With the limited means available it was im-
possible to educate the body of the people. Endeavours should be
made to form a class of persons "Indian in blood and colour, but ;(
English in tastes, in opinion, in morals and in intellect". These would
refine the vernaculars, enrich them with Western terms of science and
render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the
great mass of the population.
Bentinck promptly noted his "entire " concurrence with Macaulay's
views. In the previous month he had placed William Adam, editor
of a popular Calcutta journal and ex-missionary, under the orders
of the Committee of Public Instruction to conduct enquiries into
the state of indigenous education in Bengal. In a minute dated
20 January, 1835,2 he had observed, when appointing Adam, that a
true estimate of the Indian mind and capacity could not be formed
without the information which Adam was to collect. Adam, however,
had barely begun when Macaulay's minute was laid before Bentinck's
1 Cf. pp. 3 sqq., supra. 2 Adam, op. cit. pp. 10-13.
112 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
colleagues with the governor-generars note of concurrence and an
adverse memorandum drawn up by H. T. Prinsep, a civil servant
of twenty-six years' service, Persian secretary to the government
and member of the Committee of Public Instruction.^ But already
the news had leaked out that the Sanskrit College and the Muham-
madan Madrasa were to be abolished, and petitions against such
proceedings, signed by thousands of Hindus and Muhammadans, had
been presented. After a hot debate in council between Macaulay and
Prinsep, it was decided on 7 March, 1835, that
the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of Europ>ean
y Uteratnre and science among the natives of India ; and that all the funds appro-
priated to education would best be employed on English education alone.
But no college or school of Indian learning, which enjoyed any
popularity, would be abolished. Existing professors and students at
such institutions as were under the committee's superintendence were
to go on receiving their stipends. No more students, however, were
to be supported during the period of their education and no money
should be employed on printing Oriental works. All funds thus
released should be employed "in imparting to the native population
a knowledge of English literature and science through the medium of
the English language".
Prinsep's memorandum, 2 dated 15 February, 1835, was by
Bentinck's order excluded from the record on the ground that its
author was a secretary and not a member of council. But it survived
and still gives the case for the Orientalists. The weightiest passages
were those in which the author urged the veneration in which Sanskrit
and Arabic were still held by Hindus and Muslims as communities.
Bounties to students were, he contended, really scholarships, and in
the Muhammad an Madrasa had been given for proficiency in English.
"Undoubtedly", ran the memorandum, "there is a very widely spread anxiety
at this time for the attainment of a certain proficiency in English. The sentiment is
to be encouraged by all means as the source and forerunner of great moral improve-
ment to those who jfeel its influence ; but there is no single member of the Education
Conmiittee who will venture to assert that this disposition has yet shown itself
extensively among the Mussalmans. It is the Hindus of Calcutta, the sirkars
(accountants and commercial managers) and Kulin (Brahman) connections, and
the descendants and relations of the sirkars of former days, those who have risen
through their connexion with the English and with public offices, men who hold
that a knowledge of English is a necessary qualification. These are the classes of
persons to whom the study of English is as yet confined; and certainly we have no
reason yet to believe that the Mussalmans in any part of India can be reconciled
to the cultivation of it, much less give it a preference to the polite literature of their
race or to what they look upon as such."
* R-other of the remarkable James Prinsep, F.R.S., sometime secretary of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal (see James Prinsep, Essays on Indian antiquities^ ed. by Edward Thomas,
John Murray, 1858, i, iii).
* Sharp, op. cit. i, 117.
I
MAGAULAY 113
This passage elicited the following marginal note from Macaulay:
"There is no good English scheme for the Mussalmans; and one of
our first duties is to establish one'*. No such scheme was, however,
established. The Muhammadans were opposed to the whole project,
looking upon the exclusive encouragement of English as a step toward
religious conversion.^
In a minute dated 20 May, 1835, laid before the council after
Bentinck's departure, Prinsep called the resolution of 7 March " a rash
act". The natives should (he said) be left to choose their own courses
of education, and all should equally be encouraged by the govern-
ment, who should however arrange "to give them the direction to
true science and good taste in literature which the superior lights of
Europe enable us to bestow". Any deviation from this principle of
free choice and equal encouragement could only do mischief by
exciting feelings of distrust and perhaps irritation.
Macaulay remained president of the Committee of Public Instruc-
tion till 1838. His writings show how seriously he took his voluntary
and unpaid duties, and how earnestly he tried to lead the young
generation to a knowledge of the best English literature, which he
relied on as a strong cultural and religious influence. Unlike Grant,
he took no particular thought for science or agriculture. European
knowledge would soon, he thought, be exhibited in the vernacular
languages. As things were going, in thirty years there would not be
a single idolater among the respectable classes of Bengal. 2 His com-
mittee began to establish Anglo-vernacular schools at the head-
quarters of various districts. These were first known as "zillah"
(district) schools and afterwards as "high" schools. The courses of
study therein were mainly literary, an arrangement which accorded
with Macaulay's own taste and with the inclinations of people whose
traditional systems of learning were chiefly literary and religious.
It is regrettable that such important issues as those involved in the
decision of 7 March, 1835, had become "a watchword for violent
discussion and personal feeling ".^ Had there been less heat in the
whole contention, Macaulay would have been persuaded that he
really had something to learn from the Orientalists, and that the
whole past and present of the great religious and social systems, which
he did not care to understand, forbade even the remotest possibility
of their collapse within any measurable period of time. That in any
case the new education would leave women untouched, that the
Muhammadans were strongly averse to it, these and other obvious
considerations were dismissed by him as negligible. It was unfor-
tunate too that the results of Adam's enquiries were not available for
Bentinck and his council. Had they been aware of the extent of self-
supporting indigenous education, they might have cut the Gordian
^ Mahmud, op. cit. p. 54. ^ Trevelyan, Life and Letters, p. 464.
" Lord Auckland, ap. Sharp, op. cit. i, 147.
114 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
knot in less trenchant a fashion. But their funds were extremely
Limited, and in view of the ideas prevalent both in parliament and in
Leadenhall Street, they naturally made a strong effort to push the
kind of education for which there was evidently a clamant local
demand. Macaulay and his minute precipitated a decision which was
hardly avoidable. Yet the views recorded by Bentinck in his minute
of 20 January, 1835, show that, after writing it, he was completely
carried away by Macaulay's vigorous eloquence.^
Duff was better informed than Macaulay, for he viewed the situa-
tion with some degree of Indian experience. He approved of the
y decision of 1 835, but considered that the exclusion of religious teaching
from the government schools would leave a void which the mis-
sionaries must labour to fill: modern knowledge was like the ocean
seen to roll its waters from shore to shore. But if like the ocean it had
its gentle breezes, might it not have its storms and quicksands too?^
He returned to his work as a Christian educationist and achieved
remarkable success. Believing his own creed to be true, he believed
that it could be reconciled with everything else which is also true.
With the power of a great personality he influenced the lives of many. ^
In spite of Bentinck's very definite declaration and Macaulay's
prompt action, in Bengal only was the teaching of English con-
tinuously preferred to all other educational objectives. Even there
the pendulum swung back in some small degree. The decision to
spend no more money on Oriental works was modified in 1838 and
a grant of 500 rupees a month was allotted to the Asiatic Society of
Bengal which enabled it to carry on the valuable Bibliotheca Indica
series of Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian texts.* The directors hesitated
to make English a medium of teaching ; and had not the rage for
learning English spread rapidly in Calcutta, the history of education
in after years might have taken a somewhat different course.
In March, 1836, Lord Auckland became governor-general and was
faced by an attempted renewal of the controversy of 1835. Before his
arrival restrictions on the press had been removed by Metcalfe, and
journalism had thus been greatly stimulated. Now Adam's reports
began to come in and afforded food for much reflection. Accurate
information regarding the indigenous systems was at last provided;
there were no vernacular textbooks ; the miserable condition of the
schools was emphasised ; the possibility of converting them into some-
thing better was insisted on. They should be left in the hands of the
* Adam, op. cit. p. lo. We may note that on 28 December, 1855, Max Muller was given
an interview by Macaulay when the Professor, "primed with every possible argument in
favour of Oriental studies, had to sit silent for an hour while the historian poured out his
diametrically opposite views, and then dismissed his visitor who tried in vain to utter a
single word. *I went back to Oxford', he said, 'a sadder and a wiser man'". Life of Max
Muller, edited by his wife, i, 162, Longmans, Green, 1902.
2 Duff, op. cit. p. 265.
' See Paton, op. cit.
* Centenary Review of Asiatic Society of Bengal (1784- 1883), p. 59.
ADAM'S REPORTS 115
people, but assisted in various ways. This should be the supreme
objective. Western knowledge was much needed, but nowhere should
English be a medium of instruction. At present a class of men was
being produced who stood apart from both their fellow-countrymen
and the British, and found inadequate scope for their attainments.
The masses were left in ignorance; so industry languished; crime
flourished; the support of the people for salutary measures could not
be counted on. The press was now free; the civil and political rights
of the people had been enlarged ; but the government should, by a
general system of instruction, timely established, teach the people
"the proper use of the mighty instrument which had been placed in
their hands and of the various franchises that had been and might be
from time to time bestowed".^ Auckland was impressed by Adam's
arguments but saw that to accept them would mean delay and open
up vistas of heavy expenditure; the filtration theory must now be
fully tested. Money too was scarce. Only ^24,000 was annually
available for the whole Bengal Presidency. So the governor-general
wrote a minute ^ of prodigious length, adhering to the filtration theory
but emphasising the importance of providing a larger number of good
vernacular class-books. Orientalist colleges must be kept in funds;
but nothing could be done at present for the indigenous schools. In
a dispatch of 20 January, 1841, the directors agreed with him; but
abandoning to some extent the views of Macaulay and Bentinck, they
stated that the diffusion of European knowledge need not necessarily
be through English. Vernacular translations of English books would
serve for the purpose.
In 1842 the Committee of Public Instruction was superseded by
a Council of Education composed partly of Indian gentlemen. This
body's activities were mainly limited to Calcutta. Outside the capital
the government was responsible; and in April, 1843, the control and
management of educational institutions in the Upper Bengal or the
North-Western Provinces were made over to the lieutenant-governor.
Sir G. Clerk, who in August attacked the accepted policy, laying
stress on the difference between the habits and customs of the in-
fluential classes in the upper and the lower provinces. In the former
the native gentry neither countenanced nor supported the govern-
ment schools. In 1844 Lord Hardinge's government announced that
candidates qualified by a knowledge of English would be preferred
for the public service.^ Examinations were instituted by the Council
of Education and students who qualified therein were enrolled as fit
for (although not necessarily entitled to) employment. The distinction
^ Adam, op. cit. pp. 341-2. ^ Sharp, op. cit. i, 160.
^ In 1 830 the government of the Bengal Presidency had notified "that in the nomination
of government vakils (agents) in the native courts and of agents with the Commissioners",
familiarity with English would constitute a recommendation to preference unless on special
grounds this rule was disregarded. It is, however, doubtful if it was ever acted on. History
of the Benares Sanskrit College, p. 73.
8-2
ii6 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
was not appreciated, and those who were unsuccessful in obtaining
such posts as they desired resented the disappointment. Western
education, however, had been clearly declared a passport to govern-
ment service, the most coveted of all professions.
Anglo-vernacular schools were established in outlying districts of
Bengal, and in 1844 some vernacular village schools were started
which ended in failure. The indigenous vernacular schools were left
out in the cold; they neither improved in quality nor declined in
number. From considered reluctance to infringe in any way on social
custom and on long-standing ideas regarding the seclusion or sub-
jection of women, the government stood aside from the efforts of the
missionaries, of David Hare, and of a few private societies and in-
dividuals, to promote female education. The missionaries started day-
schools for girls, boarding establishments for orphans and domestic
instruction in the families of the middle and higher classes. The results
were small; but the main credit of a great initiative rests with them.^
From Leitner's Report it appears that there was far more indigenous
female education in the Panjab than there was in the older provinces.
A school for girls was in 1849 established and maintained in Calcutta
by J. E. D. Bethune, member of the governor-general's council and
president of the Council of Education, who spent his money freely on
the undertaking. 2 Dalhousie considered that this generous example
was likely to be followed by Indian gentlemen and that schools for
girls could be promoted by district officers. The directors, however,
threw cold water on this idea as they were unwilling to alarm con-
servative Indian opinion. After Bethune's untimely death, the ex-
penses of his school were borne first by Dalhousie and afterwards by
a fund raised by public subscription to carry on Bethune's work.
While Western education was acquiring increasing momentum
among the Hindus of Bengal, it progressed very slowly in inland
^ provinces where government servants were practically the only
European residents. James Thomason, lieutenant-governor of the
North-Western Provinces from 1843 to 1853, was anxious to promote
rural education^ "enlisting the persons whom the people may them-
selves select as teachers, and support for that purpose". Enquiries
had disclosed the fact that in these provinces only 64,335 (50,026
Hindus and 14,309 Muhammadans) out ofa population of2 1,630, 167
were in receipt of any education. Eventually a halqabandi (circle)
school system was devised whereby villages were grouped in circles
of five, the land-holders of each group undertaking to pay for a school
by a voluntary cess of i per cent, on the land-revenue. This system
was in 1852-3 introduced into eight districts and was afterwards
* Richey, Selections from the Educational Records, p. 34; Adam, op. cit. pp. 335-7.
* Calcutta Review, xxi, 513.
* Richey, op. cit. p. 61 ; also a memorandum by R. Burn, Census Superintendent North-
Wcstcm Provinces and Oudh (unpublished) .
LACK OF A UNIFORM POLICY 117
extended as other districts came under land-revenue settlement. The
scheme, as sanctioned by the directors, involved the levy of a cess of
I per cent, on the rent, which was deducted before the revenue was
calculated, so that payment was shared by the government and the
land-holder. In Bombay the government ignored the filtration theory,
and endeavoured primarily to promote education through the ver-
nacular, admitting to education in English those who sought it and
"had the capacity to acquire European learning ".^ Throughout the
southern presidency missionary enterprise was busy. English, Scotch,
Americans and Irish Presbyterians vied with each other in honourable
rivalry. 2 In 1839 Lord Elphinstone, governor of Madras, advocated
the establishment of a university open to students who possessed some
knowledge of English. The institution came into existence as a school
which in 1852 bore the title of the " Madras University High School".
It was then the only state or state-controlled school or college in the
presidency. But the gap left by the government had been filled by
missionaries of various denominations, Jesuit fathers, Wesley ans and
the English, Scottish and American Churches. The number of mis-
sionary schools in Madras exceeded those in all other presidencies put
together.^
Kaye tells us that the state educational expenditure in 1853
amounted to about £70,000. For many years, as Dalhousie observed,
the public finances had been "in a condition which clogged the action
of the government".* In Bengal the government was maintaining-
thirty colleges and schools in which English was taught, but only
thirty- three vernacular schools against Bombay's 233. Among the
most successful government institutions were the Medical College
started by Bentinck in Calcutta, and the Thomason Engineering
College at Rurki in the Nor th-Wes tern Provinces. Throughout India
the Hindu aristocracy held aloof from the new learning. Their literary
tastes were satisfied by the poetry of their race ; and they had no
inclination to send their sons to schools where social contact with boys
of a lower order would mean contamination. The Muhammadans, as
a body, also stood outside. They had never felt disposed to do anything
else. Proud of an imperial past, attached to their own classics,^ they
held that religious and secular instruction should go together. Their
young men were freely employed in administrative posts, but despised
clerical and office work.
As the time approached for another revision of the Company's
charter, it became more and more apparent that uniformity and
constancy of aim were lacking in the educational policies of the various
provincial governments. The situation was reviewed by Dalhousie,
^ Richey, p. i8. * Report of the Education Commission 0/1882, pp. 12-13.
' Madras Administrative Report, 1855-6; Richey,o/>.«7. p. 183. See also Satthianadhan,
History of Education in Madras, pp. 38-g, and Report of the Education Commission of 1882, p. 10.
* Richey, op. cit. p. 113.
^ Report of the Education Commission of 1882, p. 483.
ii8 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
who forwarded proposals to the directors. A parliamentary com-
mittee was appointed and examined a number of witnesses, including
such veterans as Trevelyan and Duff. Sir Charles Wood, president of
the Board of Control, after much deliberation, forwarded a scheme to
India through the court of directors (dispatch 49 of 19 July, 1854)
which imposed upon the government the task of "creating a properly
articulated scheme of education, from the primary school to the
university". As state schools and colleges were intended to benefit
the general population, the instruction which they gave must ob-
viously be "exclusively secular"; but
every honest educational agency, whether religious or not, should be encouraged
to the utmost, under the inspection and direction of a government department, and
with the encouragement and assistance of the local officers of government, upon
the value of which emphasis was laid.^
The filtration theory was unsatisfying. The indigenous schools were
no longer to be left to themselves, but "made capable of imparting
correct elementary knowledge to the great mass of people". The
methods adopted in the North- Western Provinces for promoting rural
education were commended for general imitation. A regular system
of scholarships must be instituted to connect lower schools with higher,
and higher schools v/ith colleges. Voluntary effort must be supported
by grants-in-aid from the state awarded with entire impartiality.
Female education must be frankly and cordially supported. It might
be anticipated that eventually state education would become educa-
tion supported where necessary by state grants-in-aid.
Universities would be established at Calcutta^ and Bombay and
would be allowed at Madras or elsewhere provided a sufficient number
of colleges were forthcoming. They would be examining bodies on
the model of the London University, depending, so far as teaching
was concerned, upon the various colleges, whether maintained by
government or voluntary effort. But professorships should be insti-
tuted for instruction in such subjects as law and civil engineering. It
would greatly encourage the cultivation of the vernaculars if chairs
were also founded for promoting the study of these languages and
perhaps also of Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian. The acquisition of
degrees would bring highly educated young men to the notice of the
government and facilitate selections for the public services.
The particular attention of the government should be given to the
diffusion through the schools of useful and practical knowledge
among the people generally. So far state energies had been too ex-
clusively directed toward "providing a very high degree of education "
for classes who were often able and wilHng to bear at least a con-
siderable portion of the cost themselves. More could be done to
^ Calcutta University Commission Report, i, 40,
2 A scheme for a university at Calcutta had been proposed in 1845 by the Council of
Education, but had remained in abeyance.
WOOD'S SCHEME AND THE MUTINY 119
prepare good vernacular class-books containing European informa-
tion. Teaching of English, where there was a demand for it, should be
combined with careful attention to the vernaculars, but English alone
possessed a sufficiently supple and extended vocabulary for conveying
the elements of Western sciences. This exhaustive dispatch concluded
with the observation that no sudden or speedy results could be
expected from the adoption of the wide measures prescribed. The
outcome depended far more on the people themselves than on the
government.
No time was lost in acting on these orders, ^ which, in Dalhousie's
words, "set forth a scheme of education for all India far wider and
more comprehensive than the supreme or any local government could
have ventured to suggest". Departments of public instruction were
organised; and in 1857 examining universities were established at
Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. But work had hardly begun when
the Mutiny intervened ; and it is natural to enquire whether British
educational policy had contributed to produce that great struggle.
Kaye replies in the affirmative,^ pointing out inter alia that the policy
of the dispatch of 1854, relying partly on missionary aid, and aiming
at penetrating even to the zenanas, was in fact a challenge to Brah-
manism, and that the tendency of educational measures from 1835
onwards had been to curtail Muhammadan emoluments and Muham-
madan dignity. Outram considered that the crusading, improving,
spirit of the past twenty-five years was bound to cause a resounding
clash. ^ It certainly gave the instigators of rebellion one of the prin-
cipal texts from which they preached. But features in various outbreaks
revealed unmistakably the full extent of the dangers which spring from
unbounded and credulous ignorance. Lord Canning had received
a disagreeable shock from the attitude of the Bengali press at the very
crisis of the empire's fate;* but he never faltered in pursuing the
educational policy laid down in 1854.
Among many subjects of importance none can have a stronger claim on our
attention than that of education. It is one of our most sacred duties to be the means,
as far as in us Hes, of conferring upon natives of India those vast moral and material
blessings which flow from the diffusion of useful knowledge, and which India may,
under Providence, derive from her connection with England.
So ran the preamble of the dispatch of 1854. The pioneers of this
policy were Grant and Carey. Wilberforce lent his powerful aid ; the
unremembered Robert Smith suggested the clause which proved the
starting-point for a great undertaking; Hare by his devoted labours
earned the lasting gratitude of Bengali Hindus ;^ Ram Mohan Roy
^ See Calcutta Review^ i860, xxxv, 401-26.
^ History of the Indian Mutiny ^ i, 131-43.
* Lee-Warner, Dalhousie, 11, 355.
* Donogh, Law of Sedition in Indian p. 182; Kaye and Malleson, History of the Mutiny ^
III, 13.
^ Banerjee, A Nation in the Making, pp. 1-2.
120 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
prepared the way for Bentinck and Macaulay. A Hindu movement
in Calcutta, due largely to the persevering efforts of the missionaries,
combined with the general trend of political thought in England, with
the eloquent pen of Macaulay and with the inclinations of the governor-
general to produce the decision of 1835 which was in the circumstances
natural but broke violently with the past, took no account of the
indigenous vernacular schools or of the importance of preserving as
far as possible their self-supporting character, and encouraged ten-
dencies which, as years went on, passed beyond control. The new
policy was carried into effect in Bengal by a brilliant Whig politician
who possessed no knowledge of the history of Indian thought and no
understanding of the Indian mind. The years which followed 1835
V were years of varying opinion, uneven direction, and scanty expendi-
ture. Then a great governor-general found time to consider education
and corresponded with a president of the Board of Control, who, con-
vinced of the supreme importance of the subject, gave it elaborate
attention, and pricked out a chart for future guidance. His chief
desire was that England should do her duty by those many millions
for whose welfare she had undertaken responsibility, that they should
be less and less cramped and plagued by the evils which spring from
ignorance and tyrannical superstitions, that while the ancient learning
of India should still be held in honour, her peoples should no longer
be penned behind those barriers of stationary thought which for long
centuries had been so powerfully restrictive. But he saw clearly that
whatever the government might attempt, the eventual issues lay with
the people themselves.
CHAPTER VII
SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
JJ Y the charter of 1698 parliament provided for the maintenance of
ministers and schoolmasters in all the Company's garrisons and
superior factories. The ministers must learn Portuguese within one
year of their arrival in India and must apply themselves to acquire
knowledge of the native languages in order to be able "to instruct
the gentoos that shall be servants or slaves of the Company or of their
agents in the Protestant religion". In 1700 the directors communi-
cated to their "commanders of ships and agents of factories" a form
of prayer, sanctioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop
of London, which contained the supplication
that we adorning the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour in all things, these Indian
nations among whom we dwell, beholding our good works may be won over to love
our most holy religion, and glorify thee, our Father which art in Heaven.^
Forty years before, when asking certain doctors of Oxford and Cam-
bridge for assistance in procuring the services of a chaplain for their
settlements, the directors had expressed a vague desire "to endeavour
the advance and spreading of the Gospel in India ";2 but whatever
might be the views of the day in Leadenhall Street, the governors and
councils at Madras, Calcutta and Bombay were by no means inclined
to missionary enterprise. The records of the India Office contain a
bitter complaint written about 1702, by Benjamin Adams, chaplain
of "the Bay" (of Bengal), emphasising the great discouragement and
disadvantage under which the "missionary clergy" abroad were
living, and the opposition which they met from their own chiefs.^ The
majority of the scanty staff of chaplains who were sent out were
engaged for periods of three, five, or seven years ; they were often
incapacitated by illness; they often refrained from learning Portu-
guese, and in the ordinary course of their duties they had small
occasion to learn thoroughly any Indian language. A more pressing
care was the religious instruction of the "children of mixed parents"
among their congregations. In Madras these would largely have been
left to French or Portuguese Roman Catholic priests, had not other
teachers come forward. For political and religious reasons the governor
and council were glad to obtain assistance from the Lutheran mis-
sionaries of Tranquebar, Danish and German, who received generous
financial support from the British Society for Promoting Christian
^ Hyde, Parochial Annals, Appendix A, and Penny, Church in Madras, i, 125.
^ Sainsbury, Court Minutes, 1655-9, P« 227.
^ Hyde, op. cit. p. 75.
122 SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
Kjiowledge. In gratitude for services, both in teaching the children
of the Portuguese, Tamils and Eurasians employed by the Company's
merchants and factors, and in ministering to the Company's soldiers,
British, Swiss, Hanoverians and other Germans, these men received
free passages to India from the directors, and their goods were con-
veyed free of charge. The most notable among them was the German
Pietist, Christian Swartz, who was employed by Sir Thomas
Rumbold on a secret mission of peace to Hydar Ali in 1779, and
afterwards accepted a chaplaincy, continuing all his missionary
activities.^ A monument erected after his death in the fort church at
Madras at the expense of the Company testifies that for fifty years he
^'went about doing good", and that in him "religion appeared not
with a gloomy aspect or forbidding mien, but with a graceful form
and placid dignity".
While German and Danish missionaries were thus honoured in the
comparatively small presidency of Madras, the problems of managing
vast territories peopled by multitudes of various religions were pressing
heavily on the rulers of Bengal. By the regulations of 1793 the
governor-general in council promised to "preserve the laws of the
Shaster and the Koran, and to protect the natives of India in the free
exercise of their religion ". All rites and customs were to be tolerated ;
all endowments were left untouched; all religious liabilities created
by former rulers were accepted as trusts. As we saw in our last chapter,
when in 1793 the Company's charter came up for renewal, Wilber-
force failed to persuade parliament to impose missionary responsi-
bilities on the court of directors, and William Carey and his coadjutors
made their way to India without licences from that body. Once at
Serampur they could claim protection from the Danish flag. But they
owed their subsequent success very largely to Lord Wellesley's favour,
for he not only appointed Carey teacher of languages in the new
college for young civil servants, but personally subscribed ;,(^8oo2 to
the building of a church at Serampur, subsidising too the translation
of the Christian Scriptures into Indian languages, " to give the learned
natives access to the sacred fountain of divine truth". He "thought
that a Christian governor could not have done less, and knew that a
British governor ought not to do more".^
In religion as in other matters Wellesley pursued a policy of his
own; but he left India in 1805 and his successors were inclined to
reverse this policy. The Serampur missionaries, too, had been greatly
encouraged and conducted their operations with less discretion.
Friction with the government began, and was intensified by the news
of the mutiny at Vellore in 1806. There was no apparent connection
between this event and any missionary activities,* but the Madras
authorities stated that malicious reports had been current that it
^ See V, 282, supra. ^ Marshman, Cartj)^ Marshman and Ward, p. 170.
' Hansard, xxv, 697-8. * Mill and Wilson, History 0/ British Indian ^/ii, loi.
MISSIONARY ENTHUSIASM 123
was the wish of the British Government to convert the people of the
country to Christianity by forcible means. From 1807 to 1813 mission
work was an object of nervous apprehension to the government at
Calcutta; and missionaries without licences from the directors were
on various occasions deported from or refused permission to land in
British India. ^ Meantime, however, Methodists and Evangelicals
were vigorously stimulating religious enthusiasm in England. The
"Particular Baptist Society" which supported Carey and his col-
leagues had received subscriptions from Christians of other de-
nominations and a remarkable testimonial from the Quarterly Review,^
Wilberforce and the Clapham sect had procured the stoppage of the
slave-trade. The Church Missionary Society, the Bible Society, the
London Missionary Society and other religious associations, new and
old, were gathering increased support. Charles Grant's influence was
powerful in Leadenhall Street. When Lord Minto's government sent
home an account of its differences with the Serampur missionaries,
it had been told that the directors were not averse to the introduction
of Christianity, but to any imprudent or injudicious attempt to
introduce it by methods which irritated other religious prejudices.
It was enjoined to abstain from all unnecessary and ostentatious
interference with the proceedings of the missionaries.
"On the other hand", wrote the court, "it will be your bounden duty vigilantly
to guard the public tranquillity from interruption, and to impress upon the minds
of all the inhabitants of India, that the British faith, upon which they rely for the
free exercise of their religion, will be inviolably maintained."^
When the Company's charter came under revision in 181 3 the tide
in England was flowing in favour of the missionaries. It was urged
that the real question was not whether the natives of India should
continue to enjoy complete religious toleration, but whether that
toleration should be extended to the teachers of Christianity. Quite
apart from any doctrinal considerations, the spread of Christianity
had always meant moral progress; and the existence of such customs
as widow-burning and female infanticide showed that moral progress
was urgently required in the interests of humanity. It had been said
that the British empire in India was insecure and might easily be
upset by religious agitation. Indeed it was — a column upon sand
was but a feeble emblem of its insecurity. But even worldly policy
demanded that India should be "trained up in civilisation and
Christianity, like a child by its guardian, till such tutelage was no
longer needed". At present
if England were dispossessed of its dominion in India nothing would be retained of
aU we could have taught but that improved discipline which the people would
^ Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, i, 99.
^ "Baptist Missions", Quarterly Review, February, 1809, i, 225.
3 Dispatch, 7 September, 1808; Kaye, History of Christianity in India, pp. 513-18;
Quarterly Review, March, 181 3, ix, 236.
124 SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
exercise first to our destruction and then to their own. Not a trace of our language
would remain; and for our religion the Hindoo historians would argue that we
had none.
Such were the arguments on one side. With variations they were
pushed so vehemently that petitions loaded the tables of the houses
of parliament from religious bodies of all kinds. ^ On the other hand
it was argued that in the matter of religion the natives of India were
peculiarly sensitive. Evidence on this point, taken by a committee
of the Commons so far back as 1781, had elicited the unanimous
opinion that "any interference with the religion of the natives would
eventually insure the total destruction of the British power". On no
account should missionaries be employed or maintained by the
government. They might go to India as they had gone heretofore or
under new restrictions; they might preach, translate and teach at
their own risk; but no sanction should be given by government to
their proceedings, and no attempt should be made to tie the hands of
government from restraining their activities.
As has been shown in the last chapter, Wilberforce had abated the
demands of 1 793, and now gained his main point, for not only were
missionaries allowed to appeal to the Board ojf Control against refusals
by the directors to allow them to proceed to India, but resolutions
were incorporated in the new charter act which favoured the adoption
of a policy of promoting religious and moral improvement. The
Company's Anglican establishment was placed under the super-
intendence of a bishop and three archdeacons, for whose maintenance
adequate provision was to be made from Indian territorial revenues.
On 8 May, 18 14, the first bishop of Calcutta was consecrated in
Lambeth Palace privately in order to avoid offending Indian religious
susceptibilities, which were in fact totally unruffled by this event. ^
Between the years 181 3 and 1833 Christianity gained converts;
missionaries of various denominations considerably increased and
maintained friendly relations with the people and with the authorities.
When the charter was again renewed in 1833, arrangements were
made for the establishment of the episcopal sees of Madras and
Bombay. Missionaries were enabled to proceed to India without
licence from any authority, and rendered invaluable assistance to the
government in educational enterprise. Under the scheme of 1854
their schools became eligible for grants-in-aid. While, moreover, the
directors declared that education must be purely secular in state
schools and colleges, they understood that bibles were placed in the
libraries of these institutions, and had no desire to prevent any
explanations which pupils might spontaneously ask from teachers on
this subject provided that such information was given out of school
hours.
* Mill and Wilson, op. cit. vn, 389-96, 401.
* Kayc, British Indiay pp. 646-7.
INDIAN CHRISTIANS 125
But in other respects relations were less harmonious. Com-
plaints were made of the disabilities imposed on Indian converts to
Christianity by the government's regulations and of official en-
couragement accorded to idolatrous ceremonies and practices.^ The
fact was that succeeding to the thrones of Indian rulers, the British
Government had sanctioned by regulations certain usages repugnant
to Christian prejudices. Converts to Christianity were legally subject
to disinheritance; and native Christians, whether Protestants or the
Roman Catholics who were very numerous in Southern India,
suffered from civil disabilities and restrictions, while Hindu and
Muhammadan religious usages, institutions and ceremonies were
treated with profound official deference. Troops were turned out and
salutes were fired when festivals occurred. ^ The British Government
administered Hindu and Muhammadan religious endowments and
levied pilgrim taxes in order to pay for keeping temples in order, for
supporting priests and for providing guards on particular occasions;
it repaired sacred buildings and managed landed estates the net
proceeds from which went to ministers of temples and mosques. As
meantime only scanty sums were allotted to the service of the religion
which the rulers of the country themselves professed, the contrast gave
point to the charge that these rulers neither had nor cared for any
religion.
In the year 1832, however, with the object of affording relief to
Christian converts, the government passed a law which protected all
persons who should change their religion from consequent loss of
property. This measure evoked Hindu protests, although the Muham-
madans in the day of their power had not only protected but en-
couraged Muslim converts. The protests were disregarded; but the
new law applied only to the Bengal Presidency; and in 1845 the
bishop of Bombay represented that within his diocese native Christians
were indeed protected from violence by the courts of justice, but
derived no other benefit whatever from these institutions. Such
grievances were finally disposed of by Lord Dalhousie's government
in 1850, which passed an act rescinding all laws and usages throughout
India which inflicted upon any person forfeiture of rights and property
by reason of renunciation of or exclusion from the communion of any
religion. The act evoked loud complaints from Hindus, not un-
naturally, as under Hindu law inheritance of property was attended
by religious and ceremonial obligations. But the new measure stood.
The hopes and enthusiasm which animated the Board of Control
in 1833 stimulated general reform in India. Charles Grant, afterwards
Lord Glenelg, was president, and on 21 February addressed the
governor-general in council through the court of directors ordering
^ E.g. Peggs, India's Cries to British Humanity, 1830.
'^ Tucker, Memorials of Indian Government, p. 358. See also Kaye, History of Christianity in
India, chap, x; Lyall, op. cit. chap. x.
126 SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
the abolition of the pilgrim tax in every province and the cessation
of the practice of employing government servants in the collection,
management or custody of religious funds or offerings. No public
servant was to receive any sort of emolument from any such source.
The police posted on duty at religious festivals with a view to the
peace and security of pilgrims and worshippers must be paid out of
general revenues. Indians should be left to themselves in all matters
relating to their temples, their worship, their festivals or their cere-
monial observances. The dispatch called for further information and
added :
We are holding up a standard to which you are ultimately to conform your
policy rather than laying down a rule to which you are instantly and without
respect of circumstances to conform. . . . Such explanations should be given to the
natives as shall satisfy them that so far from abandoning the principles of a just
toleration, the British Government is resolved to apply them with more scrupulous
accuracy than ever ; and that this proceeding is in truth a recurrence to that state
of real neutrality from which we ought never to have departed.^
The dispatch, which had been long in incubation, was received by
the government of India without enthusiasm, and remained for some
time a dead letter. But regulations which insisted on the firing of
salutes, on official attendance and homage^ at Hindu and Muham-
madan festivals, were resented not only by chaplains and missionaries
but by members of the Company's services ; and a memorial which
received 200 signatures from official and non-official Europeans was
presented to the Madras Government through the bishop to be
forwarded to higher authority. The memorialists petitioned that the
instructions of 1833 should be carried out and were strongly supported
by Bishop Corrie, who thus incurred the displeasure of the local
government, but appealed to the governor-general. Strong feeling
was aroused both in India and England; and eventually on the
initiative of Sir John Cam Hobhouse, president of the Board of
Control, a dispatch was addressed by the directors to the government
of India dated 8 August, 1838, which insisted both that no more time
should be lost in obeying the instructions of 1833 and that arrange-
ments should be made
for relieving all our servants, whether Christians, Muhammadans or Hindus, from
the compulsory performance of acts which you may consider to be justly liable to
objection on the ground of religious scruples.^
The government of India obeyed, and issued orders which put an end
to the attendance of troops or military bands at native religious
festivals or ceremonies and to all firing of salutes on such occasions.
Public officers were, as far as possible, to abstain from all connection
with the ceremonies of the Hindu and Muhammadan religions. But
* Kayc, History of Christianity in India, p. 418.
' Idem, p. 421 n.; Peggs, op. cit. pp. 259-60.
' Pari. Papers, 1839, xxxix, 189; Kaye, op. cit. pp. 428-9; also Tucker, op. cit.
PP- 353-69-
SLAVERY 127
the administration of religious endowments was interwoven with the
revenue system of the country, and the tenants of landed estates which
belonged to religious establishments had always been accustomed to
look to the government as their working landlord and could not be
summarily handed over to unreliable substitutes.^ New agencies of
a trustworthy nature were hard to find, and complaints were made
that, to the grave injury of the Hindu and Muhammadan religions,
obligations were being shuffled off which had always been considered
binding.^ It was not until the year 1863, when the government of
India had been transferred to the crown, that an act was passed
which relieved public servants from all duties which embraced the
superintending of lands assigned for pious uses or the management
in any form of religious establishments belonging to the Hindu or the
Muhammadan religions. The cry of "religion in danger" which V
undoubtedly contributed to the outbreak of the Mutiny was partly
produced by a feeling that the ancient faiths of the country were losing
exclusive privileges. But it must be admitted that the Company's
conciliatory policy had been carried to extreme lengths and called
for modification.^
In tolerating all Indian rites and customs the British Government
soon found itself confronted by difficult problems. One was not felt
to be pressing. Slavery had long been an established institution not
only in India but in our American colonies. Mr Moreland, in his
valuable studies of economic conditions under the Moghul Empire,
accepts it as
a Hindu institution, though in Akbar's time at least it did not secure the approval
of all Hindus, and the text-writers refine and distinguish according to their practice
regarding its origin and incidents.*
The Ain-i-Akbari shows that slavery was also recognised by Muham-
madan law. In the first year of Warren Hastings's rule in Bengal a
regulation was passed which condemned the families of convicted
dacoits (brigands) to be sold as slaves. The "Committee of Circuit",
in proposing this legislation, observed:
The ideas of slavery borrowed from our American colonies, will make every
modification of it appear in the eyes of our countrymen in England a horrible evil.
But it is far otherwise in this country ; here slaves are treated as the children of the
families to which they belong and often acquire a much happier state by their
slavery than they could have hoped for by the enjoyment of liberty.^
But these hues are too roseate, for we find Sir William Jones remarking
to a Calcutta jury in 1 785 :
Hardly a man or woman exists in a corner of this populous town who hath not
at least one slave child either purchased at a trifling price or saved for a life that
1 Pari. Papers, 1841 (5), xvii, 741-51. ^ Lyall, op. cit. (ed. 1884), p. 282.
' See Macau lay's speech on the Gates of Somnauth, Speeches on Politics and Literature
(Everyman's Library), especially pp. 204-5.
* Moreland, India at the death of Akbar, p. 91. Cf. also From Akbar to Aurangzeh.
^ O'Malley, History of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, p. 359. Cf. Peggs, op. cit. pp. 366-8.
128 SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
seldom fails of being miserable. Many of you, I presume, have seen large boats
filled with such children coming down the river for open sale at Calcutta. Nor
can you be ignorant that most of them were stolen from their parents or bought for
perhaps a measure of rice, in time of scarcity. ^
The truth is that the treatment of slaves, domestic and agricultural,
varied in different parts of the country ;2 in most provinces, however,
it was common for very needy members of the humbler classes to sell
themselves or their children into slavery in order to obtain a bare
subsistence. But purchasers would often restore such children to their
parents in better times. The abolition of the slave-trade by the British
parliament in 1807 marked the beginning of a new era. In 1789 the
government of Lord Cornwallis had forbidden by proclamation the
collection of children and adults for the purpose of exporting them as
slaves to different parts of India or elsewhere, a practice in which
"many natives and some Europeans" had been involved.^ In 181 1
the importation of slaves from any other country into India was
forbidden. Vigorous efforts were made to suppress the trade that had
grown up.* In 1832 the purchase and sale of slaves brought from
one district to another was made a penal offence. The charter act
of 1833 required the governor-general in council to take steps for
extinguishing slavery as soon as emancipation should be safe and
practicable. India Act V of 1843 prohibited the legal recognition of
slavery; and keeping of or trafficking in slaves became a criminal
offence under the Indian Penal Code enacted in i860.
The abolition of slavery came gradually, pushed on by humanitarian
movements in England ; but it appears that at no stage was emanci-
pation opposed by any section of Indian society, although it was
accompanied by no payment of compensation to slave-owners. We
pass on to two remarkable customs of another kind which from the
outset were strongly opposed to Western ideas of humanity and
civilisation. One was sanctioned by use and wont among a powerful
caste. It was from its nature elusive, practised in domestic privacy
and therefore most difficult to stop. But it was not authorised by
religion. The other was practised in public and was protected both
by religious tradition and by priestly authority.
In the year 1802 Lord Wellesley's government, after requesting
William Carey ^ to investigate the nature of such religious sanction as
existed for throwing Hindu children, in fulfilment of vows, into the
sea at Sagor Island to be drowned or devoured by sharks, decided
to put a stop to the practice. Not only were children sacrificed in this
1 O'Malley, op. cit. p. 359.
* Pari. Papers, 1831-2, ix, App. I, A, pp. 303-4, and 1834, xliv, i 71-211. Also
Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, 11, 227-9. Sir R. Burn writes: "The practice of taking a loan
and becoming practically * adscriptus glebae ' continued quite lately in Oudh ". Cf. Report,
Linlithgow Agricultural Commission, pp. 433-5.
' Peggs, op. cit. p. 407 n.; Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, i, 547.
* Peggs, op. cit. pp. 423, 429.
* Marshman, op. cit. p. 75.
INFANTICIDE 129
manner at Sagor and other places for the supposed benefit of
survivors ; but old men and women voluntarily threw away their lives
in this fashion, although the custom was little countenanced either
by the religious orders or by the great body of people who, on the
contrary, considered it a pious act to rescue and bring up a castaway
child. By Regulation vi of 1802 child sacrifice of this kind was
declared to be murder.^
But when a practice of killing female children was discovered to be
widespread among varieties of Rajputs in different parts of the
country, a far more troublesome and elusive problem presented itself
Jonathan Duncan, resident at Benares, when travelling on the frontier
of the Jaunpur district in 1 789, discovered that murders of this kind
had long been systematically practised by a Rajput tribe called
Rajkumars through the simple method of causing mothers to refuse
nurture to some of their female children. The custom was freely
admitted in conversation and though general was not universal as
"paternal affection, or some other circumstances, had prevailed on
the fathers of Rajkumar families to bring up one or more of their
female issue"; but the instances where more than one daughter had
been spared were very rare, and only one village furnished a complete
exception to the general rule. The same practice prevailed, though
to a less degree, among a smaller tribe, also found within the province
of Benares, called Rajbanses. The motive of such crimes was desire
to shun the disgrace which must ensue from failure to provide
daughters with adequate marriage settlements. On 23 December,
1789, Duncan, writing that he had induced the Rajkumars to enter
into a covenant whereby they undertook to renounce "this horrid
practice", forwarded a translation of the covenant which stated that
infanticide, although customary among the Rajkumars, was highly
sinful according to the "Bretim Bywunt Puran" and was held in
detestation by the British Government. The Rajkumars therefore
agreed not to commit any longer such detestable acts. Those who
committed them would be outcaste and would suffer the punish-
ments prescribed by the above-mentioned Purana and the Shastras.2
Infanticide among the Rajkumars was declared to be murder by
Bengal Regulation xxi of 1795. Regulation iii of 1804 extended this
declaration to the newly ceded provinces. But, in spite of covenants
and regulations, on 30 April, 181 6, Shakespear, acting police super-
intendent of" the Western Provinces ", reported that Rajkumars were
still killing their female infants " to nearly the same degree as formerly,
though a greater degree of caution was preserved to prevent de-
tection". In the meantime Duncan, who had become governor of
Bombay, had learnt that the practice was very general among the
^ Pari. Papers, 1824, xxin, 137.
2 Pari. Papers, 1824, xxiii, 7-8; Calcutta Review, 1844, i, 377; Kaye, British India, pp.
555~^J arid Twining, Travels in India, p. 327.
C H I VI Q
130 SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
Jharija (Jadeja)^ Rajputs of Cutch and Kattiawar. The matter was
carefully investigated by Colonel Walker, political resident at
Baroda, who reported on 15 March; 1808, that throughout Cutch
there might be six or eight houses wherein the masters of Jharija
families brought up their daughters ; otherwise female infanticide was
general among Jharijas not only in Cutch but throughout the province
of Gujarat. From the reports of natives best acquainted with the
country the number of Jharija families inhabiting Cutch and Kattia-
war was estimated at 125,000 and the number of female infants yearly
destroyed at 20,000. Colonel Walker also reported that infanticide
was practised among the Rah tor Rajputs of Jaipur and Jodhpur as
well as by Jats and Mewats. The practice had never been interfered
with by any previous government. From the Jharijas he succeeded
in obtaining a covenant whereby, like the Rajkumars, these people
pledged themselves to abandon such practices. Nine years later,
however, it was ascertained that the pledge had not been observed.
There could be no doubt that infanticide was still prevalent among
the Jharijas of Gujarat. In one taluka not one female child was to be
found among 400 families. 2
In spite of constant and varied efforts and activities which are
chronicled in the parliamentary papers of certain years, the preven-
tion of female infanticide among tribes and classes addicted to this
habit long baffled British officers and administrations, to the serious
concern of the court of directors. The difficulty, both in British
territory, and to a far greater degree in native states, was to bring
specific instances to light without espionage, or encroachment on
domestic privacy. In every case of infanticide the mother either
refused nurture to the child or rubbed the nipples of her breast with
opium.3 The victim died in the home by order of the father, who was
apprehensive of being compelled later on to choose between the dis-
grace of being unable to arrange her marriage and the ruinous expense
of accomplishing it satisfactorily.*
"Although religion", says Tod, "nowhere authorizes this barbarity, the laws
which regulate marriage among the Rajputs powerfully promote infanticide. Not
only is intermarriage prohibited between families of the same clan (campa), but
between those of the same tribe (goto). . . .Many virtuous and humane princes have
endeavoured to mitigate an evil in the eradication of which every parental feeling
would co-operate. Sumptuary edicts alone can control it, and the Rajputs were
never sufficiently enamoured of despotism to permit it to rule within their private
dwellings." 5
Mountstuart Elphinstone, when governor of Bombay, minuted on
9 January, 1821, that as long as the practice was congenial to the
general feeling of the classes concerned it could not be effectually
^ Imperial Gazetteer , xv, i66. * Pari. Papers, 1824, xxra, 108-9.
' Cf. Raikes, Notes on the North-Western Provinces of India, p. 12 n.
* Cf. Census of India 1901, i, 425. See, too, Raikes, op. cit. pp. 8-9.
« Tod, Rajasthan (ed. 1880), i, 547.
INFANTICIDE
131
checked. Moreover we professed to have no concern with the civil
government and internal police of native states. We might be sure,
however, that a continuance of tranquillity and good order would
gradually cause the discontinuance of a practice repugnant to natural
instinct.
The policy, however, of the Company's governments was by no
means one of laissez-faire. From time to time the subject engaged the
particular attention of the directors. The parliamentary papers of
1843 show the vigorous nature of the preventive action taken in
British territory.^ In native states infanticide weakened before the
energetic and constant endeavours of military political officers such
as Wilkinson, Willoughby, Erskine, Jacob, Pottinger and Melville.
The record of their labours moved Alexander Duff, who was no
respecter of persons, to write in 1844:
If ever political agents, members of council, governors, governors-general and
courts of directors shall be arraigned at the bar of an impartial posterity, they may
rest assured that their best exculpatory evidence will be found, not in the brilliant
records of their civil diplomacy or military exploits, but in such humble, noiseless,
and unpretending volumes which, like the parliamentary papers on infanticide,
portray their strenuous and unwearied exertions in the sacred cause of humanity.^
Everywhere infanticide gradually yielded to the spread of Western
ideas; but even in 1870 the central government felt themselves com-
pelled to combat it by passing an act^ which enabled the application
of stringent rules for compulsory registration of births, and regular
verification of the existence of female children for some years after
birth, in places where such measures appeared desirable. We must
now turn to another custom, the suppression of which should for all
time redound to the credit of Lord William Bentinck. He struck the
final blow, but there were others who prepared the way.
Brahmanical tradition teaches that when children of high-caste
Hindus reach the age of eight to twelve, boys should go to a guru for
education and girls should marry. The duty of the latter is wifehood and
motherhood. Should a woman lose her husband, she is not permitted
to remarry although a widower may remarry at any time. A widow,
on the other hand, must lead a life of strict retirement. But throughout
India, before the year 1829, an alternative was open to her. She
might immolate herself on her husband's funeral pile and follow him
into a new life. She would then be called a sati, a faithful wife, and
would be honoured for her choice. The term sati or suttee has been
transferred by Europeans from the widow to the custom of burning
^ See report, 28 January, 1841, of the proceedings of Robert Montgomery, then district
magistrate of Allahabad, Hindu Infanticide, Accounts andpapers, 1843, p. 59. See also Raikes,
op. cit. pp. 18-22.
2 Calcutta Review i 1844, i, 435.
3 Act VIII of 1870. Gf. Sir Michael O'Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 102. Regulations
under Act VIII of 1870 were abolished in the United Provinces early in the present
century.
9-2
132 SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
her with her husband's corpse, a practice which comes down from
remote ages and was much in vogue under the Moghul Empire,
ahhough certain emperors and "subahdars" took pains to see that
victims suffered only by their own free will.^ Sati, however, was never
a universal custom in any caste, although the detailed returns which
were laid before parliament in the ten years which immediately
preceded its abolition show that it was practised in some degree by
lower as well as by higher castes. 2
When in 1772 Bengal came directly under British government^,
Warren Hastings, who held in high respect all customs interwoven
with religion even if "injudicious or fancifur',^ directed a body of
learned Brahmans gathered together from every part of the province
to prepare from the Shastras an authoritative manual of Hindu law.
Passages in this manual encourage sati; and other passages in Cole-
brooke's translation of the digest of Hindu law, which was compiled
under the superintendence of Sir William Jones, declare that the sati
enjoys delight with her husband for thirty-five million years and
expiates the sins of three generations on the paternal and maternal
side of her husband's family.
No other effectual duty is known for virtuous women at any time after the deaths
df their lords, except casting themselves into the same fire. If a woman in her
successive transmigrations declines doing so, she should not be exempt from shrinking
again to life in the body of some female animal.*
Such passages explain why in view of a clear promise to "preserve
the laws of the Shaster and the Coran, and to protect the natives of
India in the free exercise of their religion", the government of Bengal
was slow to interfere with the celebration of a rite strongly opposed
to every humanitarian principle. But the Supreme Court refused to
tolerate it within the limits of their immediate jurisdiction; and
inhabitants of Calcutta who wished to perform it were compelled to
do so in the suburbs.^ It was prohibited by the Danes at Serampur,
by the Dutch at Chinsura, by the French at Chandernagore, but
residents of these places could do as they pleased outside settlement
boundaries. Sati was allowed in the Madras Presidency, but between
the years 1770 and 1780, at any rate,^ was not tolerated within the
scattered settlements which at that time were presided over by the
government of Bombay. It was practised by the Rajputs of Gujarat
and by the Marathas but was discouraged by Baji Rao, the last of
the Peshwas, who took upon himself the charge of supporting widows
who yielded to dissuasion.
* Bernier, Travels (Constable and Smith), pp. 306-15; Foster, Early Travels in India^
p. 119; Thompson, Historical and Philosophical Enquiry.
• Cf. Census of India, 1901, vol. i, paras. 703-9, vol. xvi, para. 1 1 1.
* Gleig, Memoirs, i, 403-4.
* Colebrooke, Digest (1801), n, 452.
• Pari. Papers, 1821, xvni, 100.
• Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, i, 57, n, 26.
MEASURES AGAINST SATI 133
On the annexation of the Peshwa's dominions, Mountstuart
Elphinstone, in reply to a representation from Pottinger, collector of
Ahmadnagar,^ that "the exercise of a very trifling degree of authority
would put a stop to this perversion of reason and humanity", de-
clined on 18 August, 1 818, to sanction the smallest interposition of
authority in a cause so clearly connected with the religious prejudices
of the Hindus. Brahmans, however, might be employed to dissuade
widows from sati, and when dissuasion was successful, subsistence
allowances might be granted to the widows. A Bombay regulation
even legalised sati, declaring that assistance at rites of self-immolation
was not murder. But the centre of British administration in India wais
Calcutta; and the policy followed there must be clearly traced.
Sati in the capital presidency excited no particular protest until on
28 January, 1 789, M. H. Brooke, collector of Shahabad, thus addressed
Lord Gornwallis:
Cases sometimes occur in which a collector, having no specific orders for the
guidance of his conduct, is necessitated to act from his own sense of what is right.
This assertion has this day been verified in an application from the relations and
friends of a Hindu woman for my sanction for the horrid ceremony of burning her
with her deceased husband. Being impressed with the belief that this savage custom
has been prohibited in and about Calcutta, and considering the same reasons for
its discontinuance would probably be valid throughout the whole extent of the
Company's authority, I positively refused my assent. The rites and superstitions of
the Hindu religion should be allowed with the most unqualified tolerance, but a
practice at which human nature shudders I cannot permit without particular
instructions. I beg therefore, my Lord, to be informed whether my conduct in this
instance meets with your approbation.
Brooke doubted whether any promise of religious toleration could
absolve the British Government from prohibiting a practice "at
which humanity shuddered". But his main question was not an-
swered. He was merely informed that while his action was approved,
it must in future be confined to dissuasion and must not extend to
coercive measures or to "any exertion of official powers". The public
prohibition of sati would probably increase Hindu veneration for it.
It was hoped that the practice would decay and disappear.
On 1 7 May, 1 797, James Battray, magistrate of Midnapur, reported
that he had succeeded in preventing the sati of a child-widow aged
barely nine. But he feared that, sooner or later, it would be accom-
plished as her head had been filled with superstitious notions of
the propriety of the act. He was told to do his best to dissuade
her. Elphins tone's and Battray's letters show that on both occasions
magistrates were approached formally, and that their decisions were
obeyed. In spite of the Brahmans and the Shastras, there was, as is
apparent from much other evidence, a wide inclination to ask for and
accept the order of temporal authority. This vantage-ground was
definitely abandoned by the governments of Lord Gornwallis and
Sir John Shore.
^ Pari. Papers i 1821, xviii, 65.
134 SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
In 1 798 William Carey witnessed a sati in a Bengal district which
he vividly described in his diary. ^
We were near the village of Noya Serai. Being evening, we got out of the boat
to walk when we saw a number of people assembled on the riverside. I asked them
what they were met for, and they told me to burn the body of a dead man. I en-
quired if his wife would be burned with him ; they answered Yes, and pointed to
the woman. She was standing by the pile which was made of large billets of wood,
about 2^ feet high, 4 long and 2 wide, and on the top of which lay the dead body
of her husband. Her nearest relations stood by her, and near her was a small basket
of sweetmeats. I asked them if this was the woman's choice, or if she were brought
to it by any improper influence. They answered that it was perfectly voluntary.
I talked till reasoning was of no use, and then began to exclaim with all my might
against what they were doing, telling them that it was a shocking murder. They
told me it was a great act of holiness, and added in a very surly manner, that if
I did not like to see it I might go further off. ... I told them that I would not go,
that I was determined to stay and see the murder, and that I should certainly bear
witness of it at the tribunal of God. I exhorted the woman not to throw away her
life ; to fear nothing, for no evil would follow her refusal to burn. But she in the
most calm manner mounted the pile, and danced on it with her hands extended as
if in the utmost tranquillity of spirit. Previous to her mounting the pile, the relation
whose office it was to set fire to the pile led her six times round it. ... As she went
round she scattered the sweetmeat above-mentioned among the people, who
picked it up and ate it as a very holy thing. This being ended, and she having
mounted the pile, and danced as aforesaid (n.b. the dancing only appeared to be
to show us her contempt for death, and to prove that her dying was voluntary),
she lay down by the corpse, and put one arm under its neck and the other over it,
when a quantity of dry cocoa leaves and other substances were heaped over them
to a considerable height, and then ghee, or melted preserved butter, poured on the
top. Two bamboos were then put over them and held fast down, and the fire put
to the pile, which immediately blazed very fiercely. . . . No sooner was the fire
kindled than all the people set up a great shout — "Harree Bol. Harree Bol". It
was imjK)ssible to have heard the woman had she groaned or even cried aloud, on
account of the mad noise of the people, and it was impossible for her to stir or
struggle on account of the bamboos which were held down on her like the levers
of a press. We made much objection to their way of using these bamboos, and
insisted that it was using force to prevent the woman from getting up when the
fire burned her. But they declared that it was only done to keep the pile from
falling down. We could not bear to see more, but left them, exclaiming loudly
against the murder, and full of horror at what we had seen.^
The Serampur missionaries, after investigations which covered a
radius often miles from Calcutta, found that more than 300 satis had
taken place within six months,^ and Carey, after searching the Shas-
tras, decided that the practice was encouraged rather than enjoined.
He laid his findings before his friend Udny of the civil service, who
was then a member of Wellesley's council. On 4 January, 1805,
J. R. Elphinstone, magistrate of the Bihar (now Gaya) district,
reported to government that he had prevented the sati of a girl be-
longing to the Baniya (grain merchant) caste at the private request
of her friends. The victim had been found by the police-inspector,
who arrived on the spot only just in time, in a state of stupefaction
or intoxication. Elphinstone was not aware of any order to prevent
* Cf. Twining, op. cit. pp. 462-8.
' Walker, Life of Carey, pp. 245-6. Cf. Forbes, Ras Mala, 11, 434.
' Marshman, op. cit. p. 99.
HESITATION ABOUT SATI 135
such barbarous proceedings and asked for instructions. By order of
Lord Wellesley the letter was forwarded to the "Register" of the
court of nizamat adalat, which was held generally responsible for
the detection and prevention of crime within the presidency. The
governor-general requested that body to ascertain whether this un-
natural and inhuman custom could be abolished altogether. How
far was it really founded on religion? Surely at any rate something
could be done to prevent the drugging of victims and to rescue those
who from immaturity of years or other circumstances could not be
considered capable of judging for themselves. This letter is dated
5 February, 1805.^ The judges of the nizamat adalat on 5 June,
1805,2 forwarded the views of the pundits whom they were wont to
consult on questions of Hindu law. The latter advised that a woman
belonging to the four castes (Brahman, Khetri, Vaishya and Sudra)
might, except in particular cases, burn herself with her husband's
body and would by so doing contribute essentially to the future
happiness of both. The exceptions were women in a state of pregnancy
or menstruation, girls under the age of puberty, women with infant
children who could not provide for their support by other persons.
To drug or intoxicate a woman in order to induce her to burn herself
against her wish was contrary to law and usage. In sending on these
opinions the judges advised that while the custom could not be
abolished generally without greatly offending "religious prejudices",
it might be abolished immediately in some districts, where it had
almost fallen into disuse,^ and checked or prevented in others on
lines indicated by the replies of the pundits. They recommended a
policy of mingled abolition and compromise. It is possible that
Wellesley would have declared for wholesale abolition,* but he made
over charge of office on 31 July, 1805, and left India, taking with him
his valiant and strenuous spirit.
For seven years after his departure the reply of the nizamat adalat
was pigeon-holed in the government secretariat, although in 1807
Lord Minto observed that widow-burning was extremely prevalent,
especially in the neighbourhood of Calcutta.^ The sepoy mutiny at
Vellore in 1806 had opposed a new obstacle to the adoption of any
resolute policy by suggesting apprehension of danger from the army
should sati be forbidden. Then on 3 August, 181 2, Wauchope,
magistrate of Bundelkhand, raised the old question once more in a
letter to the register of the nizamat adalat, and asked for instructions.
Forwarding this letter to the government the court requested orders
on their communication of June, 1805. After three months of cogita-
tion the governor-general in council replied in December that as
^ Pari. Papers, 1821, xviii, 24-6.
2 Idem, p. 28.
' Peggs, op. cit. p. 54.
* Wilberforce inclined to this view. See Deanville, Life of William Carey, p. 247.
* Lord Minto in India, p. 96.
136 SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
sati was encouraged by Hindu doctrine, it must be allowed in those
cases in which it was countenanced by religion and prevented when-
ever it was not.^ The court's original suggestion, that in some districts
the sacrifice might be prevented immediately, was ignored. Magis-
trates and public officers were to prohibit compulsion, intoxication or
drugging of victims. They must forbid the sacrifice of girls under the
age of puberty and of pregnant females. The police must act on these
principles, obtaining as early notice as possible in every case. In 181 3
these rules were circulated, and in 181 5 they were supplemented by
instructions for the submission by district magistrates of annual reports
and returns of satis. In 181 7 further orders were issued prohibiting
the burning of mothers who had infants at the breast or children under
four years, or under seven unless responsible persons would take
charge of the orphans. Brahman widows, in accordance with the
Shastras, could only become satis on the funeral pyres of their hus-
bands and not elsewhere. Relatives must invariably give notice to
the police of impending satis, or would become liable to fine and
imprisonment. Till then no such obligation had been imposed.
The rules of 181 2, 181 5 and 181 7 were merely "circular orders"
issued by the government to its officers through the nizamat adalat;
they were thus devoid of legal sanction and conceded so much to the
custom at which they were aimed as to produce the impression "that
to a certain extent the practice of suttee was approved by the govern-
ment ".2 Colebrooke, the Orientalist, w2ls in 181 2 one of Lord Minto's
councillors, and afterwards justified these orders by stating that any
attempt to repress the rite by legal enactment would have been re-
sisted. Perseverance in carrying it out would have become a point of
honour.3 After-events, however, hardly support this excuse. As the
fruits of timidity and irresolution became increasingly apparent, the
government's attitude was severely criticised both in missionary pub-
lications and in reports from its own officers. The interest of religious
and humanitarian societies in the United Kingdom was stimulated
by missionary pamphlets; and in course of time the contents of official
reports and returns penetrating to Westminster became generally
known. In 1813 Wilberforce reminded the Commons that humanity
consisted not in a squeamish ear, but in being forward and active in
relief. For years, however, governments in India were allowed full
discretion in dealing with sati. Expressing a lively faith in the re-
generating influence of widening knowledge, they clung tenaciously
to a threadbare and discredited policy. And while correspondence
went on the toll of victims mounted in Bengal. The frequency of sati
in the districts round Calcutta raised the figure for cases reported in
the chief presidency far above the numbers in Madras and Bombay.
^ Pari. Papers, 1821, xviii, 29-30.
2 Statement of the Directors to the Privy Council, 1832. Peggs, op. cit. pp. 57, 59-60.
■ Colebrooke, Life of Colebrooke^ p. 285.
EWER'S REMONSTRANCES 137
It varied from 378 in 1815 to 839 in 1818, 654 in 182 1, 557 in 1823,
639 in 1825, 5^7 ^^ ^^27 and 463 in 1828. On 3 December, 1824,
the chief judge of the nizamat adalat at Calcutta observed that
many women were burnt without the knowledge of police officers,
"and in many instances the act was illegal from circumstances which
deprived it of the restricted sanction of the Shaster'*.^ In 1819 the
adalat had observed that it is doubtful whether
the measures publicly adopted with the humane view of diminishing the number
of these sacrifices by pointing out the cases in which the Hindu law is considered
to permit them have not been attended with a contrary effect to the one intended.
A spirit of fanaticism may have been rather inflamed than repressed.^
In this view the government concurred and contemplated the possi-
bility of cancelling the orders of 181 2, but were subsequently cheered
by the fact that in 1821 five widows were saved from the flames by
the presence of the police and four were induced by persuasion to
draw back at the last moment, whereof one only "was not affected
by the instrumentality or assistance of the police". The particulars of
the five rescues are significant. One widow, after ascending the pile
and feeling the flames, was saved by the presence of the police. The
second was rescued just before ascending the pile. The third, having
left the pile, was saved by the police against the will of her relatives.
The fourth came off the pile scorched and died two days afterwards.
The fifth descended from the lighted pile and was saved by the police.^
The year 1 82 1 was in this respect unusually successful. In 1 82 7, on the
other hand, only one woman, a girl of sixteen, was rescued by police
intervention.
The central government not only kept the directors in touch with
their proceedings but regularly forwarded reports from numerous
judges and executive officers, some of whom were content to wait for
a change in the attitude of Hindus toward sati, while others criticised
the accepted policy in scathing terms, strongly advocating complete
prohibition as the only satisfactory expedient. One of the latter, who
well deserves to be remembered, is Walter Ewer, superintendent of
police. Lower Provinces, who on 18 November, 18 18, addressed the
judicial secretary to the government.* He began by urging that satis
were very seldom voluntary, for few widows would think of sacrificing
themselves unless overpowered by force or persuasion; very little of
either was needed to overcome the physical or mental powers of the
average victim. A widow who would turn with natural and instinctive
horror from the first hint of sharing her husband's funeral pile, would
be gradually brought to pronounce a reluctant consent "because dis-
tracted with grief at the event, without one friend to advise or protect
her, she is little prepared to oppose the surrounding crowd of hungry
Brahmans and interested relatives either. by argument or force".
^ Pari. Papers, 1825, xxiv, 147. ^ /^^^^ 1821, xviii, 242.
* Idem, 1824, XXIII, 43. * Idem, 1821, xviii, 229.
138 SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
Accustomed to attach implicit belief to all the assertions of the former,
she dared not, if she was able to make herself heard, deny that by
becoming sati she would remain so many years in heaven, rescue her
husband from hell, and purify the family of her father, mother and
husband ; while on the other hand, disgrace in this life, and continued
transmigration into the body of a female animal, would be the certain
consequences of refusal.
In this state of confusion, a few hours quickly pass and the widow is burnt before
she has time even to think on the subject. ^ Should utter indifference for her husband
and superior sense enable her to preserve her judgment, and to resist the arguments
of those about her, it will avail her little, — the people will not on any account be
disappointed of their show ; and the entire population of a village will turn out to
assist in dragging her to the banks of the river, and in keeping her down upon the
pile. Under these circumstances nine out of ten widows are burnt to death.
Ewer then urged that the sacrifice was more frequently designed to
secure the temporal welfare of the survivors than the spiritual benefit
of the widow or her husband. The son had no longer to maintain his
mother ; the male relatives, as reversioners in default of male issue,
came in for the estate which the widow would have held for life; the
Brahmans were paid for their services, and were interested in main-
taining their religion; the crowd attended the show with the savage
merriment exhibited by an English crowd at a boxing match or a
bull-bait. Sati was indeed recommended by the Shastras, but was
not hinted at by Manu, or other high authorities which prescribed
the duties of a widow. The recommendation, too, where found in the
Shastras, was addressed to the widow and not to her relatives. It was
no part of their duties to persuade or force her in the matter. The
unhappy victims themselves were uneducated and unacquainted with
the Shastras. What the government was really doing was authorising
the sacrifice of widows by their relatives. The custom, too, might almost
be called local. In the years 1815-17, 864 satis had been performed
in five districts of Bengal — Burdwan, Hughli, the Jungle Mahals,
Nuddea and the suburbs of Calcutta, while in the same period only
663 took place throughout the rest of the empire including the holy
city of Benares, in which only forty-one sacrifices of that nature were
performed, although its population was almost exclusively Hindu,
and it was a place where every meritorious act was of double value.
Regarding standing orders Ewer wrote :
It appears to me that if the practice is allowed to exist at all, the less notice wc
take of it the better, because the apparent object of the interference of the police is
to compel the people to observe the rules of their own Shasters (which of themselves
they will not obey) by ascertaining particular circumstances of the condition of
the widow.
The police enquiries, he added, opened the widest door to extortions.
Even if such interference in some cases induced compliance with the
* Cf. Bcrnicr, op. cit. pp. 313-15 (ed. Constable).
AMHERST'S HESITATION 139
rules of the Shastra, the official attendance of the daroga stamped
every regular sati with the sanction of government ; and authorising
a practice was not the way to effect its gradual abolition. Whenever
"illegal" satis had been prevented by the police, no feeling of dis-
satisfaction had been excited. He believed that the custom might be
totally prohibited without exciting any serious or general dissatis-
faction.
Ewer's views received a trenchant endorsement from Courtney
Smith of the nizamat adalat, who on 2 August, 1821,^ recorded in
a judgment that the government, in modifying sati by their circular
orders, had thrown the ideas of the Hindus on the subject into complete
confusion. They knew not what was allowed and what was interdicted,
and would only believe that we abhorred sati when we prohibited it
in toto "by an absolute and peremptory law". They had no idea that
we might not do so with perfect safety. In forwarding to government
the returns of 1819-20 Smith urged that the toleration of sati was a
reproach to British rule, and that its abolition would be attended by
no danger. It could be abolished by a short regulation somewhat in
the style of the regulation of 1802 against the sacrifice of children at
Sagor.2 To interfere with a vigorous hand for the protection of the
weak against the strong was one of the most imperious and paramount
duties of every civilised state, from which it could not shrink without
a manifest diminution of its dignity and an essential degradation of
its character among nations.
Similar protests came from other officers and from other parts of
India. On 14 September, 18 13, Lushington, a Madras magistrate,
informed his government that except to a few necessitous Brahmans
who "received a nefarious reward for presiding at this infernal rite",
the prohibition of sati would give "universal satisfaction".
It is not surprising that, although such representations as these were
accompanied by others of a soothing nature, the directors were ill at
ease. On 17 June, 1823, they thus addressed the government of
India:
You are aware that the attention of parliament and the public has lately been
called to the subject. It appears that the practice varies very much in different
parts of India both as to the extent to which it prevails and the enthusiasm by
which it is upheld.. . .It is upon intelligible grounds that you have adopted the
rules which permit the sacrifice when clearly voluntary and conformable to the
Hindu religion. But to us it appears very doubtful (and we are confirmed in this
doubt by responsible authorities) whether the measures which have been taken in
pursuance of this principle have not tended rather to increase than to diminish
the practice. It is moreover with much reluctance that we can consent to make the
British Government, by specific permission of the suttee, an ostensible party to the
sacrifice ; we are averse also to the practice of making British courts expounders
and vindicators of the Hindu religion when it leads to acts which not less as legis-
lators than as Christians we abominate.
1 Pari. Papers^ 1823, ^vii, 67.
2 Idem, p. 63,
140 SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
They would not then press this reasoning, but the matter must be
further considered. They would co-operate in any measures which
"your superior means of estimating consequences may suggest".^
But the government over which Lord Amherst presided was
"unwilling to abandon the hope that the abolition of suttee might
at some future period be found safe and expedient". They based this
hope on the fact that they had remarked already "that the more
general dissemination of knowledge among the better informed Hindus
themselves might be expected to prepare gradually the minds of the
natives for such a measure ".^
The allusion here is clearly to the campaign against sati led by the
Brahman reformer Ram Mohan Roy, mentioned in the last chapter.
When in 1818 some Hindus had petitioned against the orders which
the government had issued restricting the practice of sati, Ram
Mohan Roy had produced a counter-petition which contained these
passages :
Your petitioners are fully aware, from their own knowledge or from the authority
of creditable eye-witnesses, that cases have frequently occurred when women have
been induced by the persuasion of their next heirs, interested in their destruction,
to burn themselves at the funeral pile of their husbands : that others who have been
induced by fear to retract a resolution, rashly expressed in the first moments of
grief, of burning with their deceased husbands have been forced down upon the
pile and there bound with ropes and green bamboos until consumed with the
flames; that some after flying from the flames have been carried back by their
relatives and burnt to death. All these instances, your petitioners frankly admit,
are murders according to every Shzister as well as to the commonsense of all nations.
Ram Mohan Roy, at grave personal risk, endeavoured to stop satis
by tracts and other methods of dissuasion. He obtained support from
some of his fellow-countrymen, but was bitterly opposed by the
orthodox school under Raja Radha Kanta Deb.^ So fierce were the
feelings aroused that for a time the reformer went about in fear of his
life and had to be protected by a guard.*
In July, 1828, Amherst was succeeded by Lord William Bentinck,
a reformer by temperament,^ who had been governor of Madras
when the Vellore mutiny occurred and had now been instructed by
the directors to consider definite measures for the immediate or
gradual abolition of sati.^ After careful enquiry, within a year of
taking office, he decided to put an end to the practice in British
territory without delay, against the advice not only of Horace Hayman
Wilson, the leading Orientalist of the day, but also of Ram Mohan
Roy. With some qualms and careful explanations he recorded his
determination in an elaborate minute which he placed before his
* Pari. Papers, 1824, xxin, 44-5. * Iderriy 1825, xxiv, 153-4.
» Peggs, op. cit. p. 89.
* Pari. Papers, 1825, xxiv, 11; O'Malley, op. cit. pp. 342-3; Dutt, Literature of Bengal,
pp. 143, 147.
* Cf. Kaye, Life of Metcalfe, 11, 172-3.
* Statement of the directors to the Privy Council (unpublished).
BENTINCK'S ACTION 141
council. He had elicited the views of fifty- three officers, mostly
military, of whom twenty-four were in favour of immediate abolition,
and fifteen principal civil servants, of whom eight held the same view; ^
he had also received two reports of the nizamat adalat with the
unanimous opinions of the judges in favour of abolition, and returns
of satis in 1827-8 exhibiting some decline of numbers.
"If this diminution", he wrote, "could be ascribed to any change of opinion
upon the question, or the progress of civilisation or education, the fact would be
most satisfactory, and to disturb this sure though slow process of self-correction
would be most impolitic and unwise. But I think it may be safely affirmed that
though in Calcutta truth may be said to have made a considerable advance among
the higher orders, yet in respect to the population at large no change whatever has
taken place, and from these causes at least no hope of abandonment of the rite
can be rationally entertained."
H. H. Wilson, then secretary of the Hindu college (Vidyalaya),
considers it a dangerous evasion of the real difficulties to attempt to prove that
satis are not "essentially a part of the Hindu religion". I entirely agree with him.
The question is not what the rite is but what it is supposed to be, and I have no
doubt that the conscientious belief of every order of Hindus with few exceptions,
regard it as sacred.
Bentinck went on to observe that both Wilson and Ram Mohan Roy
considered that abolition would cause general distrust and dissatis-
faction. They considered that the practice might be gradually sup-
pressed by increasing checks. By far the greater number of satis,
however, occurred among the unmartial inhabitants of Bengal and
after enquiry he had concluded that abolition would cause no trouble
in the army. He observed that the judges of the nizamat adalat
were unanimously in favour of it, and laid before his council the draft
of the necessary regulation, concluding with the following sentences :
The primary object of my heart is the benefit of the Hindus. I know nothing so
important to the improvement of their future conditions as the establishment of
a purer morality, whatever their belief, and a more just conception of the will of
God. The first step to this better understanding will be the dissolution of religious
belief and practice from blood and murder. I disown in these remarks or in this
measure any view whatever to conversion to our own faith. I write and feel a
legislator for the Hindu, and as, I believe, many enlightened Hindus think and
feel. Descending from these higher considerations, it cannot be a dishonest ambi-
tion that the government of which I form a part should have the credit of an act
which is to wash out a foul stain on British rule, and to stay a sacrifice of humanity
and justice to a doubtful expediency; and finally I may be permitted to feel deeply
anxious that our course shall be in accordance with the noble example set to us by
the British Government at home, and that the adaptation, when practicable to
the circumstances of this vast Indian population, of the same enlightened prin-
ciples, may promote there as well as here the general prosperity, and may exalt
the character of the nation.
Charles Metcalfe, the most prominent of the governor-general's
councillors, while noting his concurrence, observed that he was not
without apprehension that the measure might possibly be "used by
^ Statement of the directors to the Privy Council.
142 SOCIAL POLICY TO 1858
the disaffected and designing to inflame the passions of the multitude
and produce a religious excitement", the consequences of which,
once set in action, could not quickly be foreseen. But if the measure
were not made "an engine to produce insurrection" in the early
period of its operation, it would not cause danger later on. His fears
or doubts were as to the immediate future and were not sufficiently
strong to dissuade him from joining heartily "in the suppression of
the horrible custom by which so many lives are cruelly sacrificed".^
On 4 December, 1829, sati was declared by Regulation xvii to be
illegal in the Bengal Presidency and punishable by the criminal courts.
Persons assisting a voluntary sacrifice would be deemed guilty of
culpable homicide; but those convicted of using violence or compul-
sion or assisting in burning or burying a Hindu widow in a state of
stupefaction or in circumstances impeding the exercise of her free
will, would be liable to sentence of death. A similar regulation was
passed in Madras on 2 February, 1830. In Bombay Sir John Malcolm's
government repealed that clause in their regulations which declared
"assistance at the rites of self-immolation not to be murder ".^
On 19 December, 1829, a petition of remonstrance was presented
to Bentinck signed by "several thousand persons, being zamindars,
principal and other Hindoo inhabitants of Bengal, Bihar, Orissa etc."
On 14 January, 1 830, the petitioners were informed that their remedy,
if any, lay in appeal to the Privy Council. They did appeal, asserting
that the obnoxious regulation interfered with their "most antient and
sacred rites and usages" and violated "the conscientious belief of an
entire nation". Abuses, if any, which might have arisen could be
effectually prevented by a proper attention to Hindu opinion. They
"wholly" denied, however, that such abuses existed. The regulation
infringed the sacred pledge to keep inviolate the religion, laws and
usages of the Hindus which was manifest throughout the whole tenor
of parliamentary legislation. In reply the directors summarised the
history of the past and stated their own unanswerable case.^ It was
supported by petitions which Ram Mohan Roy had brought with him
to England and had presented to parliament on behalf of his followers.
The appeal was dismissed by the Privy Council in the presence of this
true-hearted and courageous man ; and no trouble whatever resulted
in India. For years sati continued in the Panjab until the fall of the
Sikh Empire. In the Rajput states it gave way gradually to British
insistence combined with spread of the knowledge among Rajput
ladies that such things were not done in British territory.* Sati has
been performed in our own time;^ and the circumstances which
* Kaye, Life of Metcalfe, ii, 194.
* Pari. Papers, 183 1-2, ix, 354.
' Unpublished papers preserved in the India Office.
* Article by E.J. Thompson, Edinburgh Review, April, 1927, pp. 274-86; and Suttee
p. 106.
* O'Malley, op. cit. p. 346; Thompson, Suttee, chap. ix.
SATI ABOLISHED 143
attended the case at Barh in the Patna district of Bihar in November,
1927, show clearly that the rite, from its sacrificial character and
appeal to belief in metempsychosis,^ still has power to thrill crowds
of Hindus with reverence and sympathy. It has numbered among its
victims women who have faced an agonising death with courageous
self-devotion 2 in firm faith that they were answering the call of religion
and honour, and in distaste for a life which offered no prospect of
happiness. But it has also unquestionably brought about the murder,
in circumstances of revolting cruelty, of many a helpless widow, of
girls on the very threshold of life. Reviewing its history in British
India from 1789 to 1829, observing the apparently small proportion
of its victims to the general population even in Bengal, and the passive
acceptance of abolition when at last abolition came, it is difficult to
avoid the conclusion that a wrong keynote was struck at the very
beginning which reverberated dismally through after-years, that
Brooke, Ewer, Courtney Smith and other subordinate officers were
right, that governors and councillors were wrong, and that Bentinck
put an end to years of degrading, lamentable and unnecessary com-
promise. At the same time we must remember that Bentinck himself,
in his great minute, expressly exonerated his predecessors. *' I should '*,
he wrote, "have acted as they have done."
* Tod, Rajasthan, i, 635. Cf. The Times, 5 February, 1929.
2 Lepel Griffin, Ranjit Singh, pp. 66-7 ; Kincaid and Parasnis, History of the Maratha
People, II, 301-4.
CHAPTER VIH
THE COMPANY'S MARINE
XHE history of the Company's Marine commences in 1613, when
a squadron was formed at Surat to protect the East India Company's
trade from the constant aggressions of the Portuguese and the pirates
who infested the west coast of India. Included in this squadron were
the Dragon and Osiander, commanded by Captain Best, who ulti-
mately broke the marine predominance of the Portuguese at Swally
in January, 161 5. At that date the Company's naval forces comprised
these two English ships and ten armed grabs or gallivatSy^ which may
be held to have formed the original nucleus of the Bombay Marine.
This small force gradually increased during the first half of the seven-
teenth century, and during that period was engaged in a practically
continuous and on the whole successful struggle with the Company's
adversaries in India. In 1669, after the transfer of Bombay to the
Company, a further development took place; the construction of
small armed craft at Bombay, for the protection of the Persian Gulf
and Arabian Sea trade, was commenced, among them being two
brigantines built by a descendant of the Elizabethan shipwright,
Phineas Pett; and in 1686 the whole marine establishment was finally
transferred from Surat to Bombay, the marine stores being housed in
Bombay castle and the ships anchored in Bombay harbour. After this
date the Company's sea-forces were officially styled the Bombay
Marine; an officer was regularly appointed "Admiral" every year;
while a supply of men for both upper and lower decks was maintained
as far as possible by drafts from England. The Marine suffered to some
extent from the lawlessness and insubordination which marked the
end of the seventeenth and the early years of the eighteenth centuries.
Two vessels, the Revenge and Hunter, played an active part in Keigwin's
rebellion of 1683 ;2 disease and financial embarrassment were re-
sponsible for reductions of the strength of the force ; while desertion
was so frequent that in 1 724 it was decided to keep the pay of all
seamen two months in arrears.
In 1 716 the Marine comprised one ship of 32 guns, four grabs with
20 to 28 guns, and twenty smaller grabs and gallivats, carrying 5 to
12 guns apiece. This force made an unsuccessful attempt to seize
Gheria (Vijayadrug), the stronghold of Angria, in 171 7; and in the
following year made a fruitless attack upon Kenery (Khanderi) island,
under the command of Manuel de Castro, whom the president,
Charles Boone, much to the annoyance of the English personnel, had
* Cf. Hobson-Jobsoriy s.vv. * Strachey, Keigwin's Rebellioriy pp. 38-9.
THE BOMBAY DOCKYARD 145
appointed Admiral of the Fleet for the occasion. Go-operation with
the Portuguese seemed fated to end in disaster, for in 1722 a joint
expedition by the Bombay Marine and a Portuguese land force against
the fort of Alibag was badly defeated, owing largely to the mistakes
and malingering of the Portuguese viceroy and his general and the
poor quality of the Bombay troops. Commodore Mathews of the
English Navy participated in this action with four English ships,
which had been dispatched by the Home Government in 1721 to
assist in clearing the Eastern seas of European pirates. A contem-
porary writer gives an amusing description of Mathews's choleric
treatment of the Portuguese authorities after the failure of the ex-
pedition, ^ of which the only creditable feature was the bravery dis-
played by the officers and seamen of the Company's Marine. During
the first three decades of the eighteenth century the antagonism of
the Portuguese, the Marathas, and the Sidi of Janjira obliged the
Bombay Council to improve the strength and status of the Marine ;
a pension scheme for the widows of officers and seamen was instituted;
several new vessels were purchased ; and the crews of the Company's
trading vessels were freely borrowed for the manning of their warships.
Consequently by 1735 the annual expenditure on the Marine had
increased to nearly two lakhs of rupees, and the fleet comprised seven
large warships and a vRriGty of gallivats and smaller vessels. ^
From the earliest years of the Company's possession of Bombay,
a marine establishment ashore, distinct from the force afloat, was
maintained under the direction of the Commodore of the Marine,
and included, among other officials, a storekeeper, a paymaster and
a purser marine. The last-named was concerned with supplies of all
kinds to the ships and indented for their cost by a monthly bill on
the paymaster, who had "the charge and direction of watering and
ballasting the Company's vessels and of purchasing what timber and
coir were wanted for their service". An important step was taken in
1735, when the Bombay Council decided to transfer their shipbuilding
yard from Surat to Bombay, and brought thither with it Lavji
Nasarvanji Wadia, the Parsi shipbuilder, who had been foreman of
the Surat yard. His first duty was to select a site for a dockyard, the
only dock available at that date being a mud basin, which filled and
emptied with the tide. The first dock, constructed on the site chosen
by Lavji, and known to-day as the Upper Old Bombay Dock, was
eventually opened in 1 754. A second dock, the Middle Old Bombay
Dock, was completed in 1 762 ; and a third, the Lower Old Bombay
Dock, in 1765. For the next forty years these three docks were the
boast of Bombay and the wonder of travellers like Grose (1750), Ives
(1758) and Parsons (1775). Lavji Nasarvanji, who served as master-
builder from 1735 to 1774 and was succeeded in office by his two
^ Downing, History of the Indian Wars (ed. Foster), pp. 63-5.
2 Bombay City Gazetteer, 11, 277.
146 THE COMPANY'S MARINE
grandsons, made continual additions to the Company's fleet, and the
reputation for strength and seaworthiness of the teakwood ships built
by him and his grandsons was so widespread and so well deserved
that the office of master-builder remained in the hands of the Wadia
family until 1885, when the work of construction and repair was
entrusted to an English chief constructor, trained in the royal dock-
yards, with a staff of European assistants. The most notable member
of the family was Jamshedji Bomanji, who, between 1793 and 1821,
built several line-of-battle ships and frigates for the Royal Navy,
besides war vessels and other craft for the East India Company.
During his tenure of office he witnessed the completion in 1807 of a
fourth dock, the Upper Duncan Dock, and the construction in 18 10
of an outer or repairing dock, the Lower Duncan Dock, both of which
were named after Jonathan Duncan, who was governor of Bombay
from 1795 to 1811.^
Meanwhile the Marine, which in 1740 comprised a hundred
officers and about two thousand seamen, who were chiefly English
but occasionally deserters of other European nations, had commenced
to lay the foundation of its subsequent reputation. In December,
1 738, Commodore Bagwell, in command of four cruisers, heavily
defeated Sambhaji Angria's fleet at the mouth of the Rajapur river;'-*
in 1 739, after the fall of Bassein, Captain Inchbird of the Marine
negotiated a treaty with the Marathas ;^ and in 1 756 a fleet of ten
ships, under the command of Commodore James, co-operated with
a royal squadron under Vice-Admiral Watson and a military force
under Clive in a second attack upon Angria's fort of Gheria. The
operations on this occasion were wholly successful ; the fort was cap-
tured on 1 3 February, 1 756 ; and the piratical chief of the Konkan
ceased from that date to figure in the politics of Western India.* On
the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, Commodore James (who
subsequently became governor of Greenwich Hospital) added to his
reputation by capturing a French vessel in 1 756 and carrying her as
prize to Bombay, and by voyaging round the coast of India in the
height of the south-west monsoon, with the object of proving that
communication between the eastern and western coasts of India was
possible at all seasons.^ This feat of navigation, which enlarged the
views of the authorities as to the potential value of the Marine, proved
doubly advantageous to the English; for the commodore not only
brought to Bengal the earliest news of the outbreak of war with
France, but also lent the services of five hundred of his seamen to
Watson and Clive, for their attack on Chandernagore in March,
1 Bombay City GazetU^fy ii, 283 and n.; Campbell, Bombay Town and Island Historical
Materials y 11, 1945^^. Cf. Low, Indian Navy^ i, 174-5.
* Low, op. cit. I, 107. Cf. Forrest, Bombay Selections (Home Series), 11, 72-4.
' Low, op. cit. I, 1 14. * Idem, i, 132 sew.
' Madras Public Dispatch to the Company, 6 June, and Public Consultations, 3 May,
1757.
MARATHA SEA-FIGHTS 147
1 757. 1 During the struggle between France and England, the Bombay
Marine was employed in co-operating with the Royal Navy in various
engagements off the Indian coasts, and in earning the title of "The
Police of the Indian Seas" by hunting the pirates of Western India
and the Persian Gulf It also laid the foundation of the present Marine
Survey of India in 1772, when Lieutenant Robinson, in command of
a schooner, a ketch and a patamar^ managed to explore and chart
the coasts of Kathiawar, Sind and Mekran and a certain part of
Arabia and Persia.^
In 1774 the Bombay Government, in pursuance of the agreement
made with Raghunatha Rau,* determined to invade Salsette and take
Thana by storm. This action was carried out on 28 December, 1774,
by a Bombay force under General Gordon and a squadron of the
Bombay Marine under Commodore John Watson, who was mortally
wounded on the third day of the siege. Later on the Maratha War
gave rise to another affair in which the reputation of the service was
signally maintained by the Ranger, a small vessel commanded by
Lieutenant Pruen, which was attacked in 1 783 by a Maratha fleet of
eleven ships, under the command of the Peshwa's admiral, Anandrava
Dhulap. The Ranger, which wais carrying several military officers as
passengers, fought against these unequal odds until nearly every
officer and seaman aboard was either killed or dangerously wounded,
and being at last overpowered, was carried off to Vijayadrug, whence
she was subsequently restored to the Company.^ In 1 780 the Marine
formed partof Sir Edward Hughes's squadroninthe operations against
Hyder Ali; two years later Commodore Armytage, in command of
the Bombay and other ships, helped to capture Rajamandrug, Kun-
dapur, Mangalore and other places on the Malabar coast; while
vessels of the Bombay Marine rendered good service in 1 796 at the
capture of the ports of Ceylon. In the pauses of the warfare engen-
dered by the march of political events the Company's ships continued
to harass their ancient foes, the pirates, and fought several engage-
ments, of which the most noteworthy took place in 1797 between the
Vigilant, commanded by Lieutenant Hayes, and four large vessels of
the Sanganian pirates. The Vigilant was suddenly attacked while
crossing the Gulf of Cutch on a political mission, but managed after
three hours' desperate fighting to drive off the enemy with heavy loss.®
In consequence of the steady growth of the Marine, the eighteenth
century witnessed various administrative changes in the dockyard
establishment. In 1 739 the post of Marine Paymaster was abolished,
his duties being transferred to the Purser Marine, and about the same
date a Superintendent of Marine was appointed on a salary of ^^220
a year. The establishment over which he presided consisted at that
* Low, op. cit. I, 138. But cf. Hill, Bengal in 1756-7, iii, 157.
2 Gf. Hobson-Jobson, s.v. ' Low, op, cit. i, 185 sqq. * Gf. vol. v, p. 257, supra.
* Low, op. cit. I, 158. * Ideniy i, 202.
10-3
148 THE COMPANY'S MARINE
date of eight commanders, one of whom was styled commodore,
a purser marine in charge of accounts and victualling, a master-
builder, and other heads of departments. To these were added in
1754 a master attendant, who twenty-three years later (1777) ranked
as second senior officer of the Marine and acted as assistant to the
superintendent for the control of port-dues and the sail-making and
rigging establishments. In 1778 the office of Superintendent of
Marine was abolished in favour of a Marine Board, advocated by the
court of directors, which was not immediately constituted and only
functioned for a short time. In its place the post of Comptroller of
Marine was created in 1785 and was held in rotation by the two
junior members of the Bombay Council, who were expected merely
to exercise general supervision over the various officers of Marine and
secure obedience to the policy of the directors, while all executive
orders relating to daily marine and dockyard administration were
issued by the governor in council.
The valuable service rendered by the Bombay Marine during the
second half of the eighteenth century was largely responsible for a
revision of the Marine Regulations by the court of directors in 1798.
Relative rank and retiring pensions were conferred upon the officers
of the service, and the privilege of private trading, which had till then
been allowed to all members, was formally abolished. The duties of
the Marine were now defined to be (a) protection of trade, (b) sup-
pression of piracy and general war-service, (c) convoy of transports
and conveyance of troops, (d) marine surveying in Eastern waters.
A Marine Board was established, composed of a civilian superintendent
as president, a master attendant, a commodore and two captains,
these four appointments being reserved for the four senior officers of
the Marine. The remaining personnel at this date consisted of thirteen
captains, thirty-three first lieutenants, twenty-one second lieutenants
and thirty-seven volunteers. The regulations of 1 798 were amended
by the issue in 18 14 of a warrant of precedence in India, by the pub-
lication in 1820 of new regulations as to uniform, and by the tem-
porary abolition of the rank of commander and the provision of
additional captains' appointments in 1824. Later on, in 1827, a
royal warrant was issued, conferring upon Marine officers equal
rank, according to their degrees, with officers of the Royal Navy,
within the limits of the East India Company's charter; by the issue
of an Admiralty warrant empowering Bombay Marine ships to fly
the Union Jack and pennant; and thirdly by an order that the
appointment of superintendent, as head of the Marine Service, should
in future be held by an officer of the Royal Navy. Finally, in 1 830, the
title of the service, which included at that date twelve captains, nine
commanders, fifty-one lieutenants and sixty-nine midshipmen, was
altered to that of "the Indian Navy".^
* Low, op. cit. I, 2 1 3 sqq.
MARINE REGULATIONS 149
The principal administrative changes after that date consisted in
the appointment in 1 83 1 of a Controller of the Dockyard in super-
session of the master attendant, the institution in 1838-9 as an
integral branch of the Marine of a steam-packet service for the carriage
of mails to Egypt; the gradual substitution of steamers for the old
teak sailing vessels;^ and successive alterations in the numbers of
the service, which was officially declared in 1847 to consist of eight
captains, sixteen commanders, sixty-eight lieutenants, no midship-
men, fourteen pursers and twelve clerks, fourteen masters and twenty-
one second masters. The post of Superintendent of Marine disappeared
in 1848, the holder at that date being styled Commander-in-Chief of
the Indian Navy; and the broad pennant of the Indian Navy, which
had till then been identical with that of the Royal Navy, was super-
seded by a red flag with a yellow cross and the East India Company's
cognisance of a yellow lion and crown in the upper corner nearest the
mast. On the assumption by the crown in 1858 of direct rule in India,
the title of the Indian Navy was changed to that of Her Majesty's
Indian Navy; and in the following year the duties of the Controller
of the Dockyard, which also included the administration of the port
and other duties now performed by the Bombay Port Trust, were
limited to the commercial work of the port, while his dockyard duties
were transferred to a dockmaster, now known as the staff officer. In
1863 a new code of regulations was issued; the name of the service
was once again changed to the Bombay Marine ; and the recruitment
of European seamen was prohibited, their places being taken by
Indians belonging to the seafaring classes of the western coast —
descendants, in fact, of the coast pirates with whom the Marine waged
so fierce a struggle in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The war services of the Bombay Marine continued during the first
half of the nineteenth century. It shared in the Egyptian campaign
of 1 80 1, helped to guard the Bay of Bengal from French aggression
in 1803, assisted at the capture of Mauritius in 18 10, and participated
in the conquest of Java in 181 1. In 1813 it was employed against the
Sultan of Sambar; in 18 15 it blockaded the piratical strongholds of
Cutch and Kathiawar; it assisted in the attack on Suvarndrug and
Madangadh during the third Maratha War; and it practically ex-
terminated piracy in the Persian Gulf in 1819.^ The siege and capture
of Mocha in 1820 offered the opportunity for a fresh display of prowess
on the part of the Marine f in the following year four ships under
Captain Hardy, Commander Stout and Lieutenants Dominicetti and
Robinson reduced the Ben-ibu-Ali Arabs to submission; and in 1826
Commodore Hayes and other officers of the Marine received the
thanks of parliament for their "skilful, gallant and meritorious
* Cf. Hoskins, British Routes to India, pp. 193 sqq.
2 Low, op. cit. I, 310 sqq.
' Dodwell, Founder of Modern Egypt, p. 60; Low, op. cit. i, 299 sqq.
150 THE COMPANY'S MARINE
exertions" against Ava. Between 1830 and 1863 the Indian Navy
was on practically continuous service in India and the Persian Gulf.
The power of the Beni-yas Arabs was broken by Captain Sawyer of
the Elphinstone in 1 835 ; in 1 838 the Indian Navy provided a blockading
squadron at the mouth of the Indus ; it served under Admiral Maitland
in the Persian Gulf and at the capture of Aden in 1839; it co-operated
with the Royal Navy during the China War of 1840-2; the officers
and crews of three vessels under Commander Nott fought at Miani
and Hyderabad (Sind) in 1843. The Company's vessels carried
troops to Vingurla during the insurrection of 1844-5 ^^ the Southern
Maratha country; in 1846 the Elphinstone (Captain Young) shared in
the capture of Ruapetapeka (New Zealand) ; during the siege of
Multan in 1848-9 the Indus flotilla was provided by the Indian Navy;
its vessels captured Bet island in 1850, played an important part in
the second Burma War of 1852, suppressed piracy on the north-east
coast of Borneo in the same year, and helped the Turks to defend
Hodeida in 1856.
On the outbreak of war with Persia in 1855, the sea forces were
drawn entirely from the Indian Navy, with Rear-Admiral Leeke in
command and Commodore Ethersay of the Company's service as
second. Bushire was taken in 1855 and Muhammarah in 1857 — the
latter operation, which had to be carried out under great difficulties,
evoking from the governor-general in council a well-merited eulogy
on the judgment, skill and discipline shown by all ranks. The Indian
Navy distinguished itself during the military operations in South
China and at the seizure of Perim island in 1857; it provided naval
brigades for service ashore during the Mutiny, while Captain Jones
of the Indian Navy held the Arab tribes of the Persian Gulf at bay
during the same grave crisis. The tale of the active war services of
the Bombay Marine forces ends with the China War of i860, when
the attack on the Taku forts was led by the Coromandel, commanded
by Lieutenant Walker.
The organisation of the Indian trooping service in 1867 sounded
the knell of the Indian Navy as a fighting force. The officers' cadre
was then enlarged to include twelve commanders, ten first, eleven
second, and seven third officers, and 109 engineers. One resident
transport officer was appointed from the service. Ten years later
(1877), however, in consultation with Captain (afterwards Admiral)
Bythesea, the Indian Government effected a radical reorganisation
of their naval establishment. The Bombay service was amalgamated
with other marine establishments in India, under the title of Her
Majesty's Indian Marine, the combined establishments being divided
into a western division concentrated at Bombay and an eastern
division at Calcutta; and the duties of the service were declared to be
(a) transport of troops and government stores, (b) maintenance of
station ships in Burma, the Andamans, Aden, and the Persian Gulf
THE INDIAN MARINE 151
for political, police, lighting and other purposes, (c) maintenance of
gunboats on the Irawadi and Euphrates, (d) building, repairing,
manning and general supervision of all local government vessels and
launches and all craft used for military purposes. In 1878 a naval
constructor was appointed from England for the first time, and this
was the prelude to the retirement in 1 885 of the last of the Wadias,
whose connection with the dockyard as master-builders had lasted
without a break for one hundred and fifty years. In 1882 the appoint-
ments of Superintendent of Marine at Bombay and Calcutta, which
were included in the reorganisation scheme of 1877, were abolished
in favour of a single appointment of director, to be held always by an
officer of the Royal Navy with Bombay as his headquarters, assisted
by a deputy, chosen from the Indian Marine and stationed at Cal-
cutta. The anomalous position of the officers and crews of the Marine,
who were not subject to the provisions of the Naval Discipline Act
and Merchant Shipping Act, was regulated by the passing of the
Indian Marine Service Act, 1884 (47 & 48 Vict. c. 38), which enabled
the governor-general in council to legislate for the maintenance of
discipline; and simultaneously the post of assistant secretary to the
Government of India (Marine Department), which had been created
in 1880 and held by Admiral Bythesea, was replaced by that of
assistant director of the Indian Marine. An Admiralty warrant of
the same year (1884) sanctioned the use by ships of the Indian Marine
as ensign of a blue flag with the Star of India in the fly, and as marine
jack of a union jack with a narrow blue border. Finally in 1891 the
title of the service was once more altered to that of " The Royal Indian
Marine" by an order in council, which also provided that officers
of the service, with the titles of commander, lieutenant and sub-
lieutenant, should rank with, but junior to, officers of the Royal Navy
of equal rank, and should wear the same uniform as the latter, with
the exception of the device on epaulettes, sword-hilt, badges and
buttons, and of the gold lace on the sleeves.
This retrospect may fitly conclude with a brief notice of the Naval
Defence Squadron and of the later progress of the Indian Marine
Survey. The former, which was established at Bombay in 1871 for the
defence of the Indian coasts, consisted in 1889 of two turret-ships and
seven torpedo boats, commanded by officers and manned by crews
of the Indian Marine. In 1 892 the squadron, which had been increased
by the purchase of two torpedo gunboats, was placed under the com-
mand of an officer of the Royal Navy, while the other officers were
chosen partly from the Royal Navy and partly from the Royal Indian
Marine. The crews comprised both bluejackets and lascars. In 1903
the squadron was abolished, and the defence of India by sea was
entrusted wholly to the Royal Navy.
The history of the survey during the nineteenth century opens with
the establishment in 1809 of a Marine Survey department in Bengal,
152 THE COMPANY'S MARINE
which charted the east coast of Africa as far south as Zanzibar, the
Persian Gulf and other seas, before it was abolished in 1828 during
Lord William Bentinck*s administration. The work of the depart-
ment, however, was considered sufficiently important to be carried
on between 1828 and 1839 by two vessels, which explored the coasts
of Africa and Socotra, the Maldive and Laccadive islands, and the
mouth of the Indus. After 1844 comprehensive surveys were con-
ducted on the Jehlam and Indus rivers, in the Gulf of Cutch and
other parts of the west coast of India, in the Bay of Bengal, on the
Pegu coast and the rivers of Burma, and in Malacca and Sumatra.
In 1 86 1 the control of the Indian Marine Survey was transferred to
the Admiralty, but seventeen years later (1878) it was again organised
in Calcutta as a department of the Indian Marine. The headquarters
were transferred from Calcutta to Bombay in 1882, and a year later
it was decided to reserve the appointments of surveyor in charge and
his senior assistants for officers of the Royal Navy and to fill the junior
officers' grades from the Royal Indian Marine. From 1894 the senior
assistants' appointments were also thrown open to the latter service.
Since its first establishment the Royal Indian Marine has performed
much valuable work in the charting and delineation of the coasts of
India, Burma, the Persian Gulf and Africa, besides materially ad-
vancing scientific knowledge of the fauna of the Indian seas.
»
CHAPTER IX
THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
X T was not for many years after its incorporation that the Company
of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies found it necessary
to employ military forces to protect its possessions and its interests,
but guards of peons, undisciplined and armed after the native fashion,
were enrolled in its factories, from the time when these were first
established. These peons could hardly be regarded as soldiers, and
were employed rather to add to the dignity of the Company's officials
than for purposes of defence. Later in the seventeenth century pro-
vision was made for the defence of the larger factories by the main-
tenance at each of a small body of European soldiers, under an ensign,
and a " gun-room crew " supplied by the Company's ships, to work the
guns of the factory.
In 1662 King Charles II sent out a small force to defend Bombay,
which was part of the dowry of his queen, but the Portuguese did not
vacate the factory until 1665, by which time the force had suffered
severely from the climate, and numbered, besides Captain Henry
Cary, who commanded it, only one ensign, four sergeants, six corporals,
four drummers, ninety-seven privates and some details, including
two gunners and a gunner's mate. In 1668, when the king leased
Bombay to the East India Company, its garrison consisted of twenty
commissioned and non-commissioned officers, 124 privates and fifty-
four Topasses, or half-caste Portuguese, and this force eventually
became the nucleus of the ist Bombay European Regiment.^ In 171 1
the garrison of Madras consisted of 250 European soldiers and 200
Topasses, and in 1748 various independent companies were embodied
as a regiment, afterwards the ist Madras Fusiliers, in which Robert
Clive received his first commission as an ensign.^
It is generally believed that Dupleix, in his war with the English
Company on the east coast, was the first to employ Indian sepoys
trained in the European manner, but this was not so. The French
settlement of Mahe was founded in 1721, near the English settlement
of Tellicherri, on the west coast, and it was here, in hostilities which
lasted from 1721 to 1729, that the term sepoy first appears as the
name of a military force in European service. They were condottieri,
whose loyalty was not always above suspicion, but they had some
knowledge of European methods of war, for a French royal officer
described them as well trained.^
^ Foster, Factories, 1668-9, p. 67; Malabari, Bombay in the Making, pp. 188-97.
* In 1748, G. B. Macleson, Lord Clive, p. 33.
' Dodwell, Sepoy Recruitment, pp. 2, 6, 7.
154 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
Dumas, the predecessor of Dupleix, first employed on the east
coast sepoys from the west coast. In 1 744 the council at Pondichery
considered the company of sepoys to be hardly worth its pay, but the
outbreak of war with the English Company obliged them not only to
retain it, but to obtain another company from Mahe.^ The French
captured Madras in 1 746, and the English Company was obliged to
turn its attention to the organisation of a force for the defence of its
possessions. In 1748 Captain Stringer Lawrence of the 14th Foot,
the "father of the Indian Army", arrived at Fort St David, then
temporarily the Company's principal factory on the east coast, with
the king's commission as major, to command all the Company's
troops in the East Indies. He embodied the Madras European
Regiment and enlisted 2000 sepoys, "at first scarcely better disciplined
than common peons ", who were organised in independent companies,
but his activities were arrested by his capture by the French. Admiral
Boscawen, who arrived at Fort St David with orders to assume the
command both at sea and on land, sent him to attack Ariancopang,
near Pondichery, where he was taken and was detained until the
Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, concluded in October, 1748, led to a cessa-
tion of hostilities and the restoration of Madras to the English Com-
pany. The organisation of the Company's forces then proceeded ; the
sepoys were placed under an English commander ^ and the "gun-
room crews" were superseded by two companies of artillery from
England, one at Fort St George and one at Fort St David. Lawrence
was granted leave to England, and his task was carried on by Robert
Clive, now a captain. His great feat of capturing and defending Arcot
in 1 75 1 was performed with 200 European soldiers and 300 sepoys,
and the conduct of the latter proved how greatly their military spirit
had improved under Clive. The quality of Eastern troops always
depends largely on the character of those by whom they are led.
Lawrence returned from England, and the hostilities between the
two Companies continued in India, though their countries were at
peace. In September, 1 754, a squadron of six ships under Admiral
Charles Watson, with the 39th Foot {Primus in Indis) under Colonel
John Adlercron, and a detachment of Royal Artillery, arrived at
Fort St George,^ and in the following year Clive, who in 1753 had
gone to England for reasons of health, returned with the king's com-
mission as a lieutenant-colonel, and assumed charge of Fort St David
as governor. Late in 1756 he was obliged to proceed to Bengal, in
order to recover Calcutta, and the troops which accompanied him,
or joined him later, consisted of detachments of the artillery, of the
39th Foot under Major Eyre Coote, and of the Madras and Bombay
European Regiments, and a force of sepoys from Madras; and he had
also at his disposal the Bengal European Regiment recently enrolled
* Dodwell, op. cit. p. 5. * Idem, p. 8.
• Love, Vestiges of Old Madras y 11, 447.
ORIGIN OF THE PRESIDENCY ARMIES 155
by Major Killpatrick/ and a force of Bengal sepoys. His campaign
in Bengal will be noticed later.
In 1757 the Seven Years' War broke out, and the two Companies
were again involved in hostilities in India. The war had not been
unforeseen, and the Madras Council was fully aware of the risk which
it ran in detaching so large a force, with its best officer, to Bengal, but
the plight of that presidency admitted of no delay. In June, 1 758,
the French, under Lally, captured Fort St David, and in December
occupied the Black Town of Madras and opened the siege of Fort
St George, but were obliged to retreat on the arrival of a British
squadron in February, 1 759.
Till then the sepoys had been organised in independent companies.
But the important development of organising them in battalions was
now introduced. The English Company had decided on the measure
before war broke out, but had had no opportunity of accomplishing it.
Lally's siege had provided further evidence of the difficulty of con-
trolling independent companies, and early in 1 759 Lawrence presided
over a committee, whose proposals provided for a sepoy force of 7000
men, formed into seven battalions, each consisting of a grenadier com-
pany and eight battalion companies, each company commanded by a
subadar, with a jamadar and a due proportion of non-commissioned
officers. Each battalion was commanded by a native commandant,
but its training was the care of two British subaltern officers and three
sergeants, and three inspecting captains were appointed to supervise
the training of the whole force, which was the real foundation of the
Indian Army as it exists to-day. ^
Clive's victory at Plassey, and the deposition of Siraj-ud-daula,
established the Company as the predominant authority in Bengal,
and the maintenance of its power required a respectable military
force. The 39th Foot was recalled to Europe, but all ranks were
permitted to volunteer for the Company's service, and five officers
and about 350 men were transferred to the Bengal establishment, the
officers receiving a step in rank.^ The two companies of the Bombay
European Regiment and the detachment of the Madras European
Regiment were also transferred to Bengal,* and a few battalions of
sepoys were raised, to each of which were posted two officers from
the European Regiment.
The armies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay now developed in-
dependently. Communication between the three presidencies was
difficult and tedious, and each was confronted with dangers which
necessitated a rapid increase in and improvement of its armed forces.
In Bengal the outbreak of war between the Company and Mir Kasim,
his massacre of 2000 sepoys at Patna, and of about two hundred
Britons there and elsewhere, and his alliance with the Nawab-
^ Innes, Bengal European Regiment, pp. 15, 1 6. ^ Love, op. cit. 11, 566.
' Idem, II, 513. * Innes, op. cit. pp. 69, 70.
156 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
Wazir of Oudh and the Emperor Shah 'Alam against the Company
led to a great expansion of the Bengal army, and Clive, during his
second term of office in Bengal, which ended in 1767, reorganised
both the army and the civil administration.^ In the Madras
Presidency the wars with the principality of Mysore, and in Bombay
the Maratha wars, lasting from 1775 to 1782, led in like manner
to great increases in the presidency armies. Thus, in Bengal the
number of sepoy battalions rose from one in 1757 to nineteen in
1764. The native ranks in each battalion consisted of a commandant,
an adjutant and ten companies, two of which were grenadiers, each
company commanded by a subadar, with three jamadars, and con-
sisting of five havildars, four naiks, two tomtoms and seventy sepoys.
Each company had its own stand of colours. ^ Besides these sepoys,
there were on the strength of the Bengal army in 1765 four companies
of artillery, twenty-four companies of European infantry, a troop of
hussars, and about 1200 irregular cavalry.^ After the conclusion of
peace the hussars were dismounted and incorporated with the
European infantry, all the irregular cavalry, except 300, were dis-
missed, the European battalion, 1600 strong, was augmented and
formed into three single-battalion regiments of nine companies each,
and each consisting of 73 1 rank and file with the same establishment
of officers as a king's regiment of the line, and three more battalions
of sepoys were raised. Clive then organised the Bengal army in three
brigades, each consisting of a troop of irregular cavalry, a company
of artillery, a battafion of European infantry, and seven battalions
of sepoys.* In the Maratha War six sepoy battalions from the first
brigade were ordered to the West of India, but six new battalions
were raised to take their place in Bengal, and several battalions
trained by British officers for the Nawab-Wazir of Oudh were
incorporated in the Bengal army.
In 1 780, in consequence of the defeat of Colonel Baillie and the
invasion by Hyder Ali of the Lower Carnatic, the Bengal Government
increased its military establishment by raising the strength of each
sepoy battalion to 1000 and dividing it into two battalions of five
companies. A major commanded each regiment, a captain each
battalion, and a lieutenant each company.
During the war in the Carnatic^ the Bengal Presidency assisted the
Madras Presidency with both European and native troops, and in
1785 the Bengal army was reorganised. Each of the two-battalion
regiments of sepoys was amalgamated into a single-battalion regiment
often companies, and the army was divided into six brigades. Each
of the three European battalions was divided into a two-battalion
regiment, allowing one European battalion to each brigade,® the
* Inries, op. cit. pp. 229, 230. ^ Williams, Bengal Infantry, p. 5.
• Broome, Bengal Army, p. 431. * Idem, pp. 533-40.
' Vol. V, p. 284. " Innes, op. cit. p. 280.
RECRUITMENT OF OFFICERS 157
other troops assigned to each brigade being a company of artillery,
with lascars, and six battalions of sepoys. These orders remained in
force until 1796.
In 1765 the Madras establishment of seven battalions of sepoys was
increased to ten battalions, each 900 strong, a captain, a lieutenant
and an ensign being posted to each battalion ; ^ and in the following
year, when the Northern Circars (Sarkars) fell into the Company's
possession, eight new battalions were raised there. These, known as
the Circar battalions, were numbered separately from the Carnatic
battalions. They invariably served, in time of peace, in the Telugu
country, where they were raised, and were inferior, both in discipline
and courage, to the Carnatic battalions. ^ The military force of the
Madras Presidency grew throughout the Mysore War, and was re-
organised in 1784, when the distinction between the Carnatic and
Circar battalions was abolished, the former being numbered from
I to 21, and the latter from 22 to 29, while the raising of new bat-
talions brought the number up to thirty-five ; but in 1 785 the number
of battalions on the Madras establishment was reduced to twenty-one,
the Circar battalions being broken up and distributed among the
battalions which were retained. This introduced a "mixed" system
of recruiting, under which the composition of each unit was a matter
of accident, "tempered from time to time by the predilections of the
officer who commanded it".
The Bombay army developed on a smaller scale. Its European
soldiers were formed into a regiment during the War of the Austrian
Succession, and before 1 796 its sepoy battalions had reached twelve
in number.
The recruitment of European officers for the Company's troops was
at first a matter of difficulty. Until 1 748 and again later, when the
seven sepoy battalions were formed, many sergeants were promoted
to the rank of ensign, but such promotions gradually became excep-
tional. "The great objection to these ranker-officers was their un-
seasonable drunkenness" and a tendency to continue to associate
with those of the rank from which they had risen. Both Clive and
Coote observed these faults, and Coote remarked: "There is little
dependence on this kind of men's behaviour, who are raised from
sergeants to rank with gentlemen".^ A few young writers followed
Clive's example, and received commissions.
Mixed blood was not a disqualification for the Company's com-
mission, which was often given to the sons of officers who had formed
irregular unions in India, as an acknowledgement of their fathers'
services, but colour was to some extent a bar, and later the Company
required of cadets appointed in India a certificate that they were not
the sons of wives or concubines of pure Indian blood.* Foreign
1 Wilson, Madras Army, i, 224. ^ Dodwell, Sepoy Recruitment, pp. 25-7.
^ Dodwell, Nabobs of Madras, p. 42. * Idem.
158 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
officers, deserters and released prisoners of war were sometimes ad-
mitted to the Company's service, and in some instances served it well,
but naturally could not always be trusted when opposed to their own
countrymen, and an attempt to maintain a Foreign Legion failed.
A Frenchman who served in the ranks of the Madras European
Regiment, but never received a commission, was Bernadotte, after-
wards a marshal of France and king of Sweden.
The most valuable source of recruitment was the royal army.
Officers of king's regiments leaving India were permitted to volunteer
for the Company's service, in which they usually received a step in
rank,^ and when peace in Europe led to the reduction of regiments
there was always a number of officers on half-pay and in reduced
circumstances who were glad to accept employment under the East
India Company. Such officers improved the efficiency, the social
status and the military spirit of the officers in the Company's armies.
When service in those armies became attractive the directors dis-
couraged local appointments, and took the military patronage, as it
became more valuable, into their own hands. They first sent out
volunteers, who served in the ranks until vacancies occurred, and
later, cadets, who were sent out as such, and received commissions as
soon as they had acquired a sufficient knowledge of drill and military
duties.
The native troops first employed against the French were Moplahs,
and "Moors" and Hindus from Mangalore and Tellicherri. Later,
in the Carnatic battalions, Muslims were the most numerous class,
Tamils coming next. The "Telingas" of the Circar battalions have
already been noticed, and in spite of their poor reputation as soldiers
they continued to be recruited after the amalgamation of the Carnatic
and Circar battalions, the classes in the mixed battalions coming in
the following order in numerical strength: (i) Muslims, (2) Telingas,
(3) Tamils, (4) Rajputs, Marathas and Brahmans, and (5) other
C2istes.^
Of the quality of the early sepoy force various opinions were ex-
pressed, some very unfavourable, but the Carnatic regiments, at least,
fought well when well led, and against the low opinion of them held
by some of the Company's officials we may set the confession of Lally :
You would be surprised at the difference between the black troops of the English
and ours; it is greater than that between a Nawab and a cooly; theirs will even
venture to attack white troops, while ours will not even look at their black ones.^
Nevertheless, the poor quality of recruits obtainable even in the
Carnatic was noticed as early as in 1788, and in 1795 the Madras
Government, probably in consequence of Lord Cornwallis's criticism
of the produce of their recruiting grounds, proposed to draw recruits,
^ Broome, op. cit. pp. 392, 393.
* Dodwell, Sepoy Recruitment^ chap. vii.
• Idenit p. 12.
SEPOY RECRUITMENT 159
to the number of six or seven hundred annually, from Bengal and
Bombay. The Bombay Government rejected the proposal, on the
ground that the natives of their presidency would not willingly serve
beyond its limits, and that they could not find, within those limits,
sufficient recruits for their own army, but the Supreme Government
agreed to supply recruits, not "stout Bengalese", as the originator of
the scheme, in his ignorance of Bengal and its inhabitants, had sug-
gested, but men more accustomed to military service. Two large
drafts were supplied, but the scheme was an utter failure. Owing to
the price of grain in the south, which was so high that a sepoy could
hardly live on his pay, and the uncongenial surroundings, it was found
impossible to keep the Bengal recruits with the colours, and they
deserted in such numbers that recruitment in the north was aban-
doned.^
The Bengal army at first drew its recruits from the mixed classes
of adventurers to be found in the Bengal provinces, and from 1776
onwards from the kingdom of Oudh, enlisting chiefly Brahmans and
Rajputs, described as a brave, manly race of people.^
It is not necessary to suppose that the discipline was exact, or the training perfect,
but both were infinitely superior to anything possessed by the Company's opponents.
The power of marching and manoeuvring in solid formations, and of concentrating
fire, and the use of well-served guns enabled small bodies of the Company's soldiers
to overcome the loosely arrayed hordes of their adversaries.^
In 1796 the armies of the three presidencies were, for the first time,
completely reorganised.* To Bengal were allotted three, and to
Madras two battalions, and to Bombay six companies of artillery, all
with complementary companies of lascars. Bengal was to maintain
three, and Madras and Bombay each two battalions of European
infantry, of ten companies, and Bengal and Madras were each to
maintain four regiments of regular native cavalry. The single-
battalion native infantry regiments were formed into regiments of
two battalions, of which Bengal had twelve, Madras eleven, and
Bombay six, with a single battalion of marines. The establishment of
British officers allowed to regiments of native cavalry and infantry
was nearly the same as in king's regiments. The reorganisation had
more than one serious defect. To the colonel commanding an infantry
regiment was transferred most of the authority which should have
been exercised by lieutenant-colonels commanding battalions, with
the result that the latter officers lost the respect of the sepoys. Both
Sir Thomas Munro and Sir John Malcolm^ considered the establish-
ment of British officers excessive, and believed that it would diminish
the sense of responsibility in the native officers. They would have
preferred the allotment, made after the Mutiny of 1857, of six or seven
^ Dodwell, Sepoy Recruitment, pp. 33-7. ^ Broome, op. cit. p. 503.
^ Imperial Gazetteer of India, iv, 330. * Idem^ iv, 333.
^ Malcolm, Political History, pp. 495-6.
i6o THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
British officers to a battalion, to act as field officers and regimental
staff, the command of companies being left to the native officers ; but
the provision of British officers was less generous than it appeared to
be. As the Company's territories extended, and it attended more
closely to matters of administrative detail, Europeans were required
for many duties for which the establishment of the civil service was
insufficient, and with which its members were not well fitted to cope.
Public works, the staff and commissariat of the army, "political",
that is to say diplomatic service at the courts of ruling chiefs, surveys,
the supervision of trunk roads, the administration of newly annexed
territory, the command and control generally of contingents and
irregular troops raised in native states and newly annexed territory,
and, later, the control of the civil police, were provided almost en-
tirely by officers of the army, and those deputed on such duties
remained on the establishments of their regiments, which they rejoined
when the regiment W2is ordered on active service, or when, by seniority,
they succeeded to the command. Allowing, besides this heavy drain,
for the number of officers on furlough, now, with pensions, granted
for the first time, the number of officers actually on duty with a regi-
ment of cavalry or a battalion of infantry was seldom more than half
the establishment.^
The sources of recruitment have already been described. The
quality of the officers was for some time poor, with several brilliant
exceptions. This was partly due to the Company's treatment of its
military officers, which was parsimonious in the extreme, and pro-
duced many unfortunate results. The material inducement offered to
tempt candidates was an initial salary of about ^120 a year, often in
an expensive environment and a noxious climate. It was practically
impossible for a young officer to keep out of debt. To set up the most
modest of households cost about £200,^ and an extract from a junior
officer's account-book shows his expenditure, in no way extravagant,
to have been Rs. 265 a month, while his pay was Rs. 195.^ Sir Thomas
Munro, who joined the Madras army in 1 780, and held a staff ap-
pointment as a lieutenant, thus describes his attempts to live within
his means:
My dress grows tattered in one quarter whilst I am establishing funds to repair
it in another, and my coat is in danger of losing the sleeves, while I am pulling it
off to try a new waistcoat.
Later, while holding a comparatively lucrative civil appointment, he
writes :
I have dined to-day on porridge, made of half-ground flour instead of oatmeal,
and I shall most likely dine to-morrow on plantain fritters, this simplicity of fare
being the effect of necessity, not of choice.*
If the Company had many bad bargains it had largely itself to thank.
* Official Army Lists. 2 Williamson, East India Vade Mecuniy i, 1 73.
* Carey, Good Old Days ^ i, 233. * IderUy i, 229.
k
ARMY LIFE i6i
Cadets were at first allowed to find accommodation for themselves
in punch-houses, but were afterwards lodged in barracks, and sub-
jected to discipline. Early in the nineteenth century a college was
established at Barasat, fourteen miles from Calcutta, where they were
instructed in drill and the Hindustani language, but the officers in
charge of them lived at a distance, and except in class and on parade
they were subjected to hardly any control or discipline. The ruin of
many promising young men, the premature deaths of not a few, and
the disgrace and shame that overtook no mean portion of the crowd
of unfortunate youths, led to the closing of the college in 1811, and
cadets were then posted to regiments, but, owing to the comparatively
small number of British officers then doing duty with most native regi-
ments, discipline was not sufficiently strict,^ and it would have been
well for the Company's armies if Sir Thomas Munro's advice that all
young men destined for native regiments should be attached for a year
or two to a British regiment, in order to learn their duties and acquire
military discipline, had been followed then, instead of much later.^
The college for cadets at Addiscombe was founded in 18 12.
The life of regimental officers in cantonments far from presidency
towns was insufferably dull and tedious. Books, book-clubs and news-
papers were few; there was practically no civilised female society, and
the monotony of the long hot-weather days, perforce spent indoors,
was dreary. Some procured books for themselves, and studied their
profession, the languages of the country, and history; some practised
music and painting, and some indulged in sport, but the sole relaxa-
tions of many were gambling and drinking. Their drink, beer, claret,
sherry, madeira and brandy, was expensive, and, if indulged in to
excess, unwholesome in the Indian climate. The mortality was great,
and ill-health, gambling and drinking produced tempers ready to take,
and equally ready to give, offence. Duels were not uncommon, and
were sometimes fatal. Concubinage was the natural result of the
absence of European women.
The number of European women to be found in Bengal and its dependencies
[early in the nineteenth century] cannot amount to two hundred and fifty, whilie
the European male inhabitants of respectability, including military officers, may
be taken at four thousand,
writes one officer, in a book^ dedicated to the directors of the East
India Company. "The case speaks for itself", he continues, "for, even
if disposed to marry, the latter have not the means." Young officers
could not be expected to accept a state of lifelong celibacy, and the
native "housekeeper" was an established institution. From such
unions, and from the marriages of European soldiers, sprang the class
known first as East Indians, then as Indo-Britons, then as Eurasians,
^ Carey, op. cit. i, 236-43.
2 Buckle, Bengal Artillery, pp. 33, 34.
' Williamson, op. cit. i, 453.
c H I VI II
1 62 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
and now, officially but inaccurately, as "Anglo-Indians". These
irregular unions were recognised not only by the officers' comrades
and superiors, but by the court of directors, who perceived that a
body of officers living with native mistresses would cost them less than
officers married to ladies of their own class and nation, and requiring
provision for their families. After the introduction of the furlough
rules, and as India became more accessible, the standard of morals
gradually improved, and, though it was long before the native mistress
ceased to be an institution, she retired by degrees into the background,
and finally disappeared.
In 1824 the armies of the three presidencies, having grown greatly
in numbers during the third Maratha, the Pindari, and the Nepal
wars, were again reorganised. The two-battalion regiments of native
infantry were divided into single-battalion regiments, of which Bengal
now had sixty-eight, Madras fifty- two, and Bombay twenty-four. The
artillery was more than doubled in strength, and was divided into
brigades and batteries of horse, and battalions and companies of foot,
artillery. Bengal and Madras each had eight, and Bombay three
regiments of regular native cavalry, and Bengal had, in addition, five,
and Bombay three regiments of irregular cavalry.^
In the same year the firstBurmese War broke out, and three regiments
of Bengal infantry, ordered to march overland to Arakan, providing
their own transport, mutinied. Whether or not transport, as was urged
on their behalf, was unprocurable, there is no doubt that it was most
difficult to obtain, and most costly, and the men suspected that the
order was a device to compel them to cross the "black water", and
thus to break their caste. Their petitions were disregarded, they broke
into mutiny, and they were "shot down and sabred on parade". The
commander-in-chief protested against the finding of the court of
enquiry that the mutiny was "an ebullition of despair against being
compelled to march without the means of doing so", but it was
certainly just.^
The Company's behaviour to its military forces was too obviously
that of a group of traders towards their servants ever to command
from them that unquestioning loyalty and obedience with which the
royal troops served the king,^ and the record of disaffection and
mutinies in its armies is a long one. In 1674 and 1679 the European
force in Bombay mutinied in consequence of reductions in its pay,*
and in 1683 Captain Richard Keigwin, commanding that force,
having been deprived of his seat in council, and the allowances
attached to it, rebelled against the Company, and declared that he
held the fort and island of Bombay on behalf of the king. Vice-
Admiral Sir Thomas Grantham eventually persuaded him, on the
^ Imperial Gazetteer qflndiay iv, 336.
^ Idem, IV, 336.
' Malcolm, Political History, p. 484.
* Malabari, op. cit. pp. 189, 190.
MUTINIES 163
promise of a free pardon, to surrender in accordance with the royal
command, and he left for England.^
In 1758 nine captains of the Bengal European Regiment, resenting
their supersession by officers of the Madras and Bombay detachments,
which were incorporated with the regiment, resigned their com-
missions together, but Clive dealt firmly with them. Six were dismissed
the service, and the other three were restored, with loss of seniority,
on expressing their contrition.^ In 1764 a mutiny in the Bengal Euro-
pean Regiment, fomented by the large numbers of foreigners who
had been enlisted, was suppressed,^ but was followed by a mutiny of
the sepoys, who were discontented with their share of the prize-money,
and with a new code of regulations and system of manoeuvres intro-
duced by Major Hector Munro, then commanding the Bengal army.
Munro quelled this mutiny with great, but not unnecessary severity,
the leading mutineers being blown from guns in the presence of their
disaffected comrades.^
The mutiny of the British officers of the Bengal army caused by the
reduction of batta, or field allowance, has been described in volume v. ^
In 1 806 a mutiny broke out in the native ranks of the Madras army.
Orders had been issued that the sepoys were to wear shakos instead
of turbans, that they were to shave their beards, and that caste-marks
and ear-rings were not to be worn on parade. The men regarded these
orders as an attack on their religion, and the garrison of Vellore,
where some of the Mysore princes were interned, hoisted the Mysore
flag, and murdered their British officers and some of the European
soldiers, but the remnant of these, under Sergeant Brodie, held out
against them until a small force under Colonel Gillespie arrived from
Arcot, blew open the gates of the fortress, cut down 400 mutineers,
and captured nearly all the rest. There had also been trouble at
Hyderabad, but Gillespie's prompt action crushed the mutiny.^
In 1809 a "white mutiny" broke out in the Madras army. Some
of its senior officers had personal grievances, some allowances had
been reduced, and the pay of the officers generally was less than that
of those on the Bengal establishment, but their chief complaint was
that the officers of the king's service monopolised the favours of the
local governrnxcnt, and held most of the staff appointments and
"situations of active trust, respectability, and emolument", as they
were described by Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. Arthur St Leger, one
of the leaders of the movement. The relative status of the officers of
the king's and the Company's services had long been a thorny ques-
tion, and the case for the Company's officers was thus moderately
^ Vol. V, p. 102, supra.
2 Innes, op. cit. pp. 71, 72.
' Idem, pp. 1 79784.
* Broome, op. cit. pp. 458-61.
^ Pp. 1 78-80, and Broome, op. cit. chap. vi.
" Wilson, op. cit. ui, chap, xviii.
1 64 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
stated by Colonel (afterwards Major-General Sir John) Malcolm,
writing in 1811 :
If it [the British Empire in India] cannot afford to give high pecuniary rewards,'
it should purchase the services of men of birth and education ; and remunerate the
great sacnfices which they make in entering the native army of India by approba-
tion, rank, and honours ; and, instead of leaving them in a state of comparative
obscurity, depressed by the consideration that they are an inferior service, and that
military fame, and the applause of their King and country, are objects placed
almost beyond their hopes; their minds should be studiously elevated to these
objects; and they should be put upon a footing which would make them have an
honourable pride in the service to which they belong. This they never can have
(such is the nature of military feeling), while they consider themselves one shade
even below another, with which they are constantly associated.^
The officers of the Madras army had long been discontented, and
the commander-in-chief, Lieutenant-General Hay Macdowell, who
sympathised with them, had done nothing to allay their discontent,
and had left for England before it reached its climax. Sir George
Barlow, the governor, at first acted injudiciously, and at Masulipatam
the officers of the European Regiment openly defied the orders of
government. The mutiny spread to Gooty, Secunderabad, Jalna,
Bellary, Cumbum, Trichinopoly, Dindigul, Madras, Pallamcottah,
Cannanore, Quilon and Seringapatam, the troops in the last-named
place rising in arms against the government. Treasure was seized,
acts of violence were committed, and the intention of the mutineers
appeared to be the subversion of the civil government. At length
vigorous action was taken. European troops were obtained from
Ceylon, and the officers who were in revolt were called upon to sign
a test, or declaration of obedience. The influence of the governor-
general. Lord Minto, and of such officers as Colonels Close and Conran,
of Colonel Montresor and Captain Sydenham at Secunderabad, and
Colonel Davis at Seringapatam, the fear lest the king's troops should
be employed against them, the lukewarm support of the sepoys when
they understood that the quarrel was not theirs, and the removal of
many officers from their regiments, when their places were taken by
king's officers, brought them to reason. Eventually no more than
twenty-one were selected for punishment, as examples to the rest. Of
these one died, four were cashiered, and sixteen dismissed the service;
but of those cashiered three, and of those dismissed twelve, were after-
wards restored. This leniency amounted to an admission that the
offence of the officers, grave though it was, was not unprovoked. ^
The growth of the presidency armies failed to keep pace with that
of the Company's territories and responsibilities, and it was found
necessary to raise local corps, " more rough and ready than the regular
army ",^ for the defence of new territories and the protection of native
ruling chiefs. In the Mysore and Maratha wars the Nizam, as the
* Malcolm, Political History , pp. 482, 483.
* Malcolm, Observations; Cardcw, White Mutiny.
' Imperial Gazetteer of India^ iv, 337.
LOCAL AND IRREGULAR CORPS 165
Company's ally, had provided contingents of troops, and Arthur
Wellesley had found the contingent provided in 1803 inefficient and
useless. As the Company maintained by treaty a large subsidiary
force for the protection of the Nizam and his dominions, it was entitled
to demand that he should provide troops fit to take the field with it
and this demand led to the establishment of the Hyderabad con-
tingent,^ a force of four regiments of cavalry, four field batteries and
six battalions of infantry, officered, but not on the same scale as the
Company's regular troops, by "respectable Europeans ".^
The fighting qualities of the Gurkhas were discovered in the Nepal
War (1814-16),^ and a few irregular battalions of Gurkhas were
raised. The first, the Malaon Regiment, was incorporated in the line,
in 1850, as the 66th Bengal Native Light Infantry, but in 1861, after
the Mutiny, it and four other Gurkha battalions were removed from
the line and numbered separately.
In 1838, when the Company foolishly undertook the restoration of
Shah Shuja to the throne of Afghanistan,* an irregular force was
raised in India for his service, and the 3rd Infantry, which had dis-
tinguished itself in the defence of Kalat-i-Ghilzai,^ was retained in
the Company's service, at first as an irregular regiment, but after the
Mutiny incorporated in the line as the 12th Bengal Native Infantry.
In 1846, after the first Sikh War,^ a brigade of irregular troops was
raised for police and general duties on the Satlej frontier, and to it was
added the Corps of Guides, a mixed regiment of cavalry and infantry,
which was incorporated in 1849, after the second Sikh War,' in an
irregular force, known later as the Panjab Frontier Force, raised and
formed for duty in the Panjab and on the North-West Frontier. It
consisted at first of three field batteries, five regiments of cavalry, five
of infantry, and the Corps of Guides, to which were added shortly
afterwards a company of garrison artillery, a sixth regiment of Panjab
infantry, five regiments of Sikh infantry, and two mountain batteries,
and in 1876 all its artillery was converted into mountain batteries.
This force, which did excellent service against the mutineers in 1857
and 1858, remained under the control of the local government of the
Panjab for many years before it was placed under that of the com-
mander-in-chief.
A local force was raised after the annexation of Nagpur in 1 854,
and the Oudh Irregular Force after the annexation of Oudh in 1856,
but the former disappeared in the Mutiny, and the latter was broken
up shortly after it.
The history of the great Mutiny of the Bengal army, which raged
for nearly two years, is recorded in the following chapter. The in-
eptitude of senile and incompetent officers, and the pathetic con-
^ Burton, History of the Hyderabad Contingent, chap. iv. ^ Idem.
3 See vol. V, pp. 377-9. * Vol. v, pp. 495-521. ^ Idem, p. 515.
« Idem, pp. 548-53- ' Jd<^m, pp. 555-7.
i66 THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
fidence of old colonels, in whom esprit de corps was so strong that even
while regiments lying beside their own were butchering their officers
they refused to believe in the possibility of treason in their own men,
made the tragedy more ghastly than it need have been. The de-
moralisation of the Bengal army was due to more than one cause. The
great additions recently made to the Company's dominions demanded
for the administration of the newly acquired territory, and for the
irregular troops and police required for its defence and for the main-
tenance of peace and order, a far larger number of British officers
than the civil service could provide, and the principal source of
supply was the Bengal army. Those to whom the government of the
new territories was entrusted refused to be satisfied with any but the
most active and zealous officers whom the army could supply, and
the army was thus deprived of the services of a large number of its
best officers, the insufficient number left for regimental duty con-
sisting, to some extent, of the Company's bad bargains. Another
reason for the decay of discipline was the system of promotion, which
was regulated solely by seniority, so that many failed to reach com^
missioned rank before the time when, in the interests of the service,
they should have been superannuated, and were inclined to regard
their promotion rather as a reward for long service than as admission
to a sphere of more important duties. In the Madras and Bombay
armies seniority, as a qualification for promotion, was tempered by
selection, and the British officers refused to pander to the caste
prejudices of their men to the same extent as the British officers in
Bengal. Partly for these reasons, and partly owing to their dislike of
the Bengal army and its airs of superiority, these armies remained
faithful; and the irregular forces of the Panjab joined with glee in
crushing the "Pandies", as the mutineers were called, from Pande,
one of the commonest surnames among the Oudh Brahmans, which
had been borne by a sepoy who had shot the adjutant of his regiment
at Barrackpore, a few months before the Mutiny broke out.
CHAPTER X
THE MUTINY
1 WISH", wrote the late Lord Cromer, "the younger generation
of Englishmen would read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the
history of the Indian Mutiny; it abounds in lessons and warnings.'*
During the generation that preceded the Mutiny various influences
were weakening the discipline of the sepoy army in the presidency of
Bengal, and awakening discontent, here and there provoking thoughts
of rebellion, in certain groups of the civil population. In considering
the measures that produced these results it should be borne in mind
that the mere fact of their having caused discontent does not condemn
them. While some were injudicious, others were beneficial, and some
helped also to minimise the disturbances to which discontent gave
rise.
In the settlement of the North-Western Provinces, by which
arrangements were made for the collection of the revenue, the re-
sponsible officers, anxious to promote the greatest happiness of the
greatest number, decided that the agreement should be concluded,
not with middlemen, but with the actual occupants of the land, who
were generally either single families or village communities. Ac-
cordingly they deprived the talukdars, through whom the native
government had collected the revenue, and who were really the
territorial aristocracy, of the right of settling for any land to which
they could not establish a clear proprietary title. At the same time
holders of rent-free tenures, many of which had been fraudulently
acquired before the Company's government was established, were
required to prove the original validity of their titles ; and since even
those whose estates had been obtained honestly were unable to pro-
duce documentary evidence, the tenures were for the most part
abolished, and the revenue was augmented for the benefit of the
government.^ The sale law, under which the estates of proprietors
were bought by speculators who were strangers to their new tenants,
aroused no less bitterness ; and under Dalhousie the policy of re-
sumption was developed. In Bombay, for instance, the Inam Com-
mission enquired into a large number of titles to land and resumed
a large number of estates. ^
In 1853 an event occurred which provoked resentment that was
not immediately manifested. Baji Rao, the ex-Peshwa with whom
Wellesley had concluded the Treaty of Bassein, died, and his adopted
son, Nana Sahib, demanded that his pension should be continued to
^ Cf. pp. 80-4, supra.
2 Cf. Baden Powell, Land Systems of British India, iii, 302 sqq.
i68 THE MUTINY
him. In accordance with the terms of the original agreement the
demand was rejected, ahhough the Nana was allowed to retain rent
free the Peshwa's landed estate.
The annexations which Dalhousie carried out under the title of
lapse, and by which he not only consolidated the empire, strengthened
its military communications, and increased its resources, but also
benefited millions who had suffered from misgovernment, caused
uneasiness to many who had submitted without any sense of injustice
to annexation that had followed conquest, and in one case provoked
passionate indignation. Under this right, Dalhousie annexed Satara,
Nagpur, Jhansi, and several minor principalities. The annexation of
Oudh was of a different kind. Misgovernment so scandalous that
even Colonel Sleeman and Henry Lawrence, those sympathetic
champions of native rulers, urged that the paramount power should
assume the administration, impelled the Board of Control and the
court of directors to insist upon a peremptory course which Dalhousie,
remembering the fidelity of the king of Oudh, was reluctant to adopt.
He urged that merely to withdraw the British troops by whose support
the king had been maintained upon the throne, on the ground that
he had not fulfilled the conditions of the treaty concluded by Wellesley,
would compel him to accept a new treaty which should provide for
the administration by British officers in his name; the directors
decided that he should be required to accept such a treaty with the
alternative of submitting to annexation. As he rejected the proffered
treaty, which, while it vested the government in the Company,
guaranteed to him the royal title, an adequate pension, and main-
tenance for all collateral branches of his family, Oudh was forthwith
annexed. Though Muhammadan pride was doubtless offended, such
discontent as the annexation aroused mattered little in comparison
with the manner in which it was carried into effect. Perhaps it was
of no great moment that the revenues of the province were not
exclusively appropriated, as Sleeman and Lawrence had recom-
mended, to the benefit of the people and the royal family ; nor would
it be just to blame Dalhousie because he decided that the provisional
settlement of the revenue should be made with the actual occupants
of the soil, and because the talukdars, although their claims were for
the most part examined with scrupulous fairness, resented the de-
cisions that compelled them to surrender their villages, and the
restraint that forced them to cease from controlling their neighbours.
What did cause indignation was that after the departure of Dalhousie,
orders which he had given were disregarded. For more than a year
no allowances were paid to the king's stipendiaries, among whom
were some of his relations ; the officiating chief commissioner took
possession of a palace which had been expressly reserved for the royal
family; the officials employed by the late court were excluded from
pensions; the disbandment of the king's army had thrown professional
DALHOUSIE'S ADMINISTRATION 169
soldiers upon the world with inadequate means of support; and in
many cases the demands of the settlement officers were excessive.
Nothing was done to guard against the disturbances which adminis-
trative changes might produce. Although Dalhousie had resolved to
disarm the country and raze every fort, his successor did nothing,^
and supposed that one weak regiment of infantry and one battery of
artillery would be sufficient to keep the peace.
More provocative than settlements and annexations were other
measures by which Dalhousie endeavoured to confer upon India the
benefits of Western civilisation. In the railways which he began to
construct, the telegraph wires by which he connected Calcutta with
Peshawar and Bombay, and Bombay with Madras, the canal which
he linked to the sacred stream of the Ganges, Brahmans fancied that
sorcery was at work. The more conservative elements of native society
suspected the European education by which he hoped to enlarge the
minds of the young, but by which the priests felt that their power was
endangered; and laws such as thatpermitting the remarriage of Hindu
widows, which he contemplated and which his successor passed, gave
deep offence.
Since it is impossible to describe by any comprehensive generalisa-
tion the sentiments of a vast heterogeneous population, divided into
numerous groups, the respective characteristics of which were more
dissimilar than those of the peoples of Europe, let us approach the
subject from different points of view. The Hindus, except in so far as
they had been offended by the measures of Dalhousie, were not
antagonistic to the government on the score of religion. While some
Muhammadans admired the strength and the justice of British rule,
others — notably the Wahabis — resented the loss of the supremacy
which their forefathers had enjoyed, and hoped to destroy as enemies
of Islam the aliens who had seized it. The mercantile and shop-
keeping classes, indeed all who knew that their position and pros-
perity were staked upon the continuance of orderly rule, were dis-
posed to support the British Government so long as it could keep the
upper hand and secure to them the enjoyment of their gains. The
magnates who had lost their lands were naturally resentful. The
countless millions who lived by tilling the soil did not care what
government might be in power, if it protected them and did not tax
them too heavily; but in some districts, especially in Bengal, they had
suffered so much from the venality of the police and the harpies who
infested the courts of justice that they were ill-disposed. In some parts
of the peninsula, notably in the Panjab and Rajputana, the people
were aware that they had profited by British rule. Ponder these words
of Sir John Strachey :
The duty was once imposed upon me of transferring a number of villages which
had long been included in a British district to one of the best governed of the native
^ Lee-Warner, Dalhousie^ ii, 338-9; Baird, Private Letters of Dalhousie, pp. 401-3.
170 THE MUTINY
states. I shall not forget the loud and universal protests of the people against the
cruel injustice with which they considered they were being treated. Everyone who
has had experience of similar cases tells the same story. Nevertheless I cannot say
that our government is loved; it is too good for that.
Reforms which interfered with native usages were resented as meddle-
some. Differences of colour, of religion, of custom, and of sympathies
separated the masses, which differed so widely among themselves,
from the ruling class. It is true that the more thoughtful acknowledged
that the British government was juster, more merciful, and more
efficient than any that had preceded it : but still many thought regret-
fully of the good old times, when, if there had been less peace, there
had been more stir, more excitement, and a wider field for adventure ;
when, if there had been less security for life and property, there had
been more opportunities for gratifying personal animosities and
making money; when, if taxation had been heavier, there had been
some chance of evading it; when, if justice had been more uncertain,
there had been more room for chicanery and intrigue. The rulers
did not conceal their sense of racial superiority, and the French critic
who described their administration as "just, but not amiable" probed
a weak spot. Though the examples of Henry Lawrence, and John
Nicholson, and Meadows Taylor, prove that individuals could win
personal loyalty and even devotion, there was no real loyalty, except
in the rare instances of such men as the illustrious Muhammadan,
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, towards the alien government. For efficiency
was not enough to keep India contented ; and since, as Lord Cromer
wrote, the Englishman is
always striving to attain two ideals, which are apt to be mutually destructive — the
ideal of good government, which connotes the continuance of his own supremacy,
and the ideal of self-government, which connotes the whole or partial abdication
of his supreme position —
there were Anglo-Indian statesmen, even before the Mutiny, who
desired to associate Indians with British rule. As early as 1818 Lord
Hastings looked forward to a
time not very remote when England will. . .wish to relinquish the domination
which she has gradually and unintentionally assumed over this country, and from
which she cannot at present recede;^
a few years later Sir Thomas Munro declared that eventually it would
"probably be best for both countries that the British control over
India should be gradually withdrawn ";2 and Dalhousie, the most
autocratic of governors-general, urged in vain that parliament should
authorise him to nominate an Indian member to his legislative council.^
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, one of the wisest of Muhammadans, after-
wards declared that the absence of such members, who would have
kept their colleagues in touch with popular sentiment, prevented the
^ Private Journal y ii, 326. * Gleig, Life of Munro, iii, 388.
* Lee-Warner, op. cit. 11, 232.
DECAY OF DISCIPLINE 171
government from knowing that laws which they enacted were mis-
chievous, and that their motives would be misunderstood.^ The
antagonism aroused by the ever-increasing pressure of Western civili-
sation during the period of Dalhousie's rule was little realised.
This antagonism, however, would never have provoked serious dis-
turbances so long as the sepoy army remained under control. Even
in earlier days isolated mutinies had occurred in consequence of the
credulity that dreaded attacks upon caste and religion. The moral of
the force was gradually weakened when the best British officers were
allured from regimental duty by the prospect of political employ and,
in consequence of the centralisation of military authority, com-
mandants were deprived of powers which they had exercised in the
days of Malcolm. But it was from the time of the Afghan, War that
native officers, who understood the feelings of their men, dated the
deterioration which made even optimists anxious. Hindus were
prevented by the cold climate from bathing as their religion enjoined,
obliged to eat food and to drink water which they regarded as impure,
and compelled on returning to India to pay for readmission to the
caste which they had thus lost; Muhammadans were offended by
being obliged to fight against men of their own creed ; and all alike,
affected by the calamities of the war, lost their traditional faith in the
invincibility of their leaders. ^ The sepoys, indeed, fought well in Sind
and in the two Sikh wars, though in the second the disorderly conduct
of certain Bengal regiments astonished a competent observer; but the
general cessation of fighting that followed the annexation of the
Panjab left a mercenary army idle, restless, conscious of power, and
ripe for mischief; and discontent, caused by the withdrawal of pe-
cuniary allowances granted for extraordinary service, led to individual
outbreaks. 3 Dalhousie was well aware of this deterioration. "The
discipline of the army", he wrote to the president of the Board of
Control, "from top to bottom, officers and men alike, is scandalous."*
Unprejudiced observers urged that in each regiment men of different
races should be enlisted, so as to lessen the risk of mutinous combina-
tion; but, as John Lawrence afterwards wrote, "Reform was im-
practicable, for the officers would not admit that any was necessary,
and nobody not in the army was supposed to know anything about it".
"The Bengal army", as the same authority remarked, "was one great
brotherhood, in which all the members felt and acted in union."
Recruited for the most part from Oudh and the North-Western
Provinces, they shared the discontents of the civil population. The
predominance of men of high caste or, at least, the deference that
was yielded to their prejudices, was fatal to discipline. A native
officer of low caste might often be seen crouching submissively before
^ Causes of the Indian Revolt, pp. 1 1-12.
2 Cf. Holmes, Indian Mutiny^ pp. 55-6.
3 Idem, pp. 57 sqq.
* Cf. Lee-Warner, op. cit. n, 257 sqq.; also Baird, op. cit. pp. 168, 355.
I7i^ THE MUTINY
the Brahman recruit whom he was supposed to command ; but men
of low caste who would have been glad to serve were often rejected.
"High caste — that is to say mutiny", wrote Sir Charles Napier, who
warmly praised the sepoys of the Bombay and Madras presidencies,
*'is encouraged"; "some day or other", he prophesied of Delhi,
"much mischief will be hatched within those walls, and no European
troops at hand. I have no confidence in the allegiance of your high-
caste mercenaries".^ The disproportion between the numbers of the
British and the native troops was glaring. At the close of Dalhousie's
administration the latter amounted to two hundred and thirty-three
thousand, the former, who, moreover, were so distributed that their
controlling power was impaired, to less than forty-six thousand, and
the disproportion was increased in the same year in consequence of
the Persian War. Dalhousie, pointing out that the Crimean War had
begotten rumours injurious to British prestige, pleaded earnestly for
a diminution of the native and a corresponding increase of the British
troops ; but for more than two years his suggestions were not brought
formally under the notice of the directors. ^
Another reform, which Dalhousie had planned and his successor
carried out, intensified the fears which the Bengal army had long felt
for their caste. Six regiments only were liable for general service, of
which three were in 1856 quartered in Pegu. Two were entitled to be
relieved within a few months; but none of the other three was
available. It was therefore impossible under the existing regulations
to send regiments by sea to the Burmese coast, and the overland route
was in part impassable. The Madras army was enlisted for general
service ; but the presidency was unwilling to arouse discontent among
its own troops by calling upon them to garrison a country which lay
properly within the sphere of the Bengal army. Confronted by
necessity, the governor-general issued a general order, decreeing that
no recruit should thenceforward be accepted who would not under-
take to go whithersoever his services might be required. "There is
no fear", he wrote a few months later, "of feelings of caste being
excited by the new enlistment regulations" ;^ but, being a new-comer,
he did not realise that the Bengal army was a brotherhood, in which
y^ military service was hereditary. Recruiting officers complained that
men of high caste, whose religious scruples were aroused by the
thought of being liable to cross the sea, had begun to shrink from
entering the service which their fathers and their brethren had flocked
to join, and old sepoys were whispering to each other their fears that
the oaths of the new recruits might be binding also upon themselves.
Two other changes, apparently trivial, increased the prevalent dis-
content. Sepoys declared unfit for foreign service were no longer to
* Th£ TimeSy 24 July, 1857, and History of the Siege of Delhi by an Officer who served there,
p. 10 n.
* Lec-Wamcr, op. cit. 11, 285. * Holmes, op. cit. p. 76.
THE GREASED CARTRIDGES 173
be allowed to retire on pensions, but to be employed in cantonment
duty, and all sepoys were thenceforth to pay the regular postage for
their letters instead of having them franked by their commandant.
The men were now in a mood to believe any lie that reflected dis-
credit upon the government. Seeing that the warlike Sikhs were
favoured by the recruiting sergeants, they fancied that a Sikh army
was to be raised to supersede them. Agitators assured them that
Lord Canning had been sent to India to convert them, and pointed
to the General Service Enlistment order as the first step. A manifesto
recently published by missionaries was interpreted as an official in-
vitation to embrace Christianity, and when the lieutenant-governor
of Bengal issued a reassuring proclamation, the bigoted Muham-
madans of the Patna division refused to believe him.^ Certain British
officers, indeed, preached the Gospel to their men with the enthusiasm
of Cromwell's Ironsides, and incurred the displeasure of government
by their proselytising zeal.^ Meanwhile the Nana Sahib, dilating
upon the annexation of Oudh, was trying to stir up native chieftains
against the British, and there is reason to believe that he and other
disaffected princes had long been tampering with the sepoys. ^ British
officers, who no longer kept native mistresses, knew little of what was
disturbing the minds of their men; but even in the Panjab rumours
were current of approaching mutiny. Finally, an old Hindu prophecy
was circulated; in 1857, the centenary of Plassey, the Company's rule
was to be destroyed.*
The incident that precipitated the Mutiny is known to all the world.
One day in January, 1857, a lascar at Dum-Dum, near Calcutta,
asked a Brahman sepoy to give him some water from his drinking cup.
The Brahman refused, saying that the cup would be contaminated
by the lips of a low-caste man : the lascar retorted that the Brahman
would soon lose his caste, for cartridges, greased with the fat of cows
or swine, were being manufactured by the government, and every
sepoy would be obliged to bite them before loading his rifle. It needs
a sympathetic imagination to gauge the shock under which the mind
of that Brahman reeled. Greased cartridges had been sent to India
from England four years before. The adjutant-general of the Bengal
army warned the board, which was then vested with military authority,
that none should be issued to native troops until it had been ascertained
that the grease was inoffensive; but the warning was neglected. The
cartridges were issued to certain regiments, merely to test how the
climate would affect the grease, and were accepted without demur.
In 1856 similar cartridges, to be used with the new Enfield rifle, began
to be made up in India, and Brahman workers handled the grease
^ Kaye, Sepoy War (ed. 1872), i, 472-3.
* Gf. Canning to Granville, 9 April, 1857 (Fitzmaurice, Life of Granville , i, 245); also
Memorials of Sir H. B. Edwardes, 11, 251 n.; Holmes, op. cit. p. 78.
^ Kaye, op. cit. i, 579.
* Holmes, op. cit. p. 79. Gf. Meadows Taylor, Story of my Life (ed. 1920), p. 340.
174 THE MUTINY
without complaint; but, after the lascar blurted out his taunt, no
cartridges greased either with beef-fat or with lard were ever issued
to any sepoys, except to one Gurkha regiment, at their own request.
Nevertheless the delusion, due to the neglect of the adjutant-
general's warning, was ineradicable.^ The story rapidly spread. The
Brahmans of Calcutta and the agents of the king of Oudh, who was
living in the suburb of Garden Reach, eagerly turned it to account. ^
The responsible officer at Dum-Dum promptly reported it, and
General Hearsey, commanding the presidency division, appended to
the report a recommendation that the sepoys at Dum-Dum, where
alone the new cartridges were immediately to be issued, should be
allowed to grease their own ; but in consequence of official delay, he
was not informed of the approval of his suggestion until 28 January,
and by that time the sepoys at Barrackpore, convinced that the story
was true, were setting fire to officers' bungalows. The governor-
general directed that greased cartridges might be issued at rifle depots,
provided that the lubricant were composed only of mutton-fat and
wax; but it soon became evident that such precautions were futile.
On 26 February the 19th Native Infantry at Berhampore, whose
suspicions had been allayed by the explanation of their commandant,
took alarm on hearing from detachments of the 34th, which had been
foolishly allowed to march thither from Barrackpore, that the lascar
had told the truth, and refused to receive their percussion caps for the
next day's parade. The commandant, instead of explaining the un-
reasonableness of their fears, threatened them with condign punish-
ment, but, having no means of enforcing his threat, was obliged to
forgo the parade. The men continued to perform their ordinary
duties; but their disobedience could not be ignored, and, as it was
impossible to punish it without British troops, the governor-general
sent for the 84th Regiment from Rangoon. Meanwhile the sepoys at
Barrackpore were becoming more and more excited. Though they
had been allowed to grease their own cartridges, they fancied that
the cartridge paper must contain objectionable fat, and when, after
analysis, it was declared to be harmless, they refused to credit the
report. Hearsey, who thoroughly understood the sepoys' mentality,
tried in vain to convince them that there was nothing to fear. Canning
accepted a suggestion that they should be allowed to avoid tasting
the paper by pinching off the ends of the cartridges ; but, as might
have been expected, the concession was useless. Hearsey had thought-
lessly told the 34th that the mutinous 19th was to be disbanded, and
they disregarded his assurance that no punishment was in store for
them. On 29 March a sepoy named Mangal Pandy murderously
attacked the adjutant; while others belaboured their officers with the
butt-ends of their muskets, one alone came to the rescue ; and the
^ Gf. Kaye, op. cit. i, Appendix, Addendum.
* Idem, I, 493.
CANNING'S HESITATION 175
mutiny was quelled only by the prompt intervention of Hearsay.
Next day, British troops having at length arrived, the 19th was dis-
banded at Barrackpore, and cheered the old general as they marched
away; but the 34th, whose offences had been far graver, were dif-
ferently treated. Though Mangal Pandy was executed after the lapse
often days, the men who had struck their officers were left unpunished
for five weeks. The governor-general, fearing that prompt retribution
would intensify the mutinous temper of the army, wasted several days
in discussing with his council the justice of inflicting punishment, and
finally, when the remonstrances of General Anson, the commander-
in-chief, impelled him to come to a decision, spent four more days in
weighing the claims of individuals to mercy.
Meanwhile the news of the growing unrest was awakening Muham-
madan fanaticism at Delhi, where there were no British troops. It was
believed that Russian invaders would soon expel the British from
India, and the titular king's courtiers looked forward to a general
mutiny which would restore his sovereignty.^ At Ambala, where the
native officers in the school of musketry, though they avowed that
they and their men were satisfied that the cartridges were harmless,
begged to be excused from using them lest they should be treated as
outcasts, the decision that they must be used was followed by incen-
diarism; and at Lucknow an irregular regiment broke into open
mutiny.
On 6 May the mutinous 34th was disbanded. Stripped of their
uniforms, the men trampled under foot their caps, which, as they had
paid for them, they had been allowed to retain, and left the parade
ground in a bitter mood. When the order for their disbandment was
read aloud at the military stations in Northern India, the sepoys, on
learning that the crime, so solemnly denounced, had been punished
not by death, but by mere dismissal, did not conceal their contempt
for the government.
"Lord Dalhousie", said the late Marquess of Tweeddale, who had
served under him, "would have stopped the Mutiny." If the judg-
ment was hasty, it pointed to an opinion which unprejudiced ob-
servers deliberately formed. Endowed with many noble qualities,
Canning lacked robustness of character. He could never decide, even
on the most urgent questions, until he had anxiously investigated
every tittle of evidence : his conscientiousness degenerated into scru-
pulousness; and he was more ready to take precautions against
injustice to the innocent than to punish the guilty. While he was
trying to coax the sepoys into obedience, he failed to see that to reason
away each successive development of morbid fancy would only
stimulate its fertility. But he was about to receive a rude awakening.
At Meerut, some forty miles north-east of Delhi, two regiments of
native infantry and one of native cavalry were quartered, together
^ Holmes, op. cit. p. 91.
176 THE MUTINY
with a battalion of the Goth Rifles, a regiment of dragoons, a troop of
horse artillery, and a light field battery — the strongest British force
at any station in the North-Western Provinces. On 23 April Colonel
Smyth, of the native cavalry, one of the few British officers who had
discerned the growing disloyalty of the Bengal army, ordered a parade
of the skirmishers of his regiment for the following morning, intending
to take advantage of the order for pinching off the ends of the cart-
ridges to give a final explanation to the men. The cartridges that were
to be issued were of the kind which they had long used. Smyth
explained that the order had been framed in consideration for their
scruples ; but of ninety skirmishers five only would even touch the
cartridges. Smyth broke off the parade and ordered a native court of
enquiry to assemble. It appeared from their report that the mutineers
had been influenced not by suspicion of the cartridges, but by fear of
public opinion. By order of the commander-in-chief they were tried
by a native court-martial and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment,
half of which was remitted in favour of the younger men by General
Hewitt, the commander of the division. On Saturday, 9 May, the
mutineers' sentences were published in the presence of the whole
brigade. As the men were being led away, they yelled out curses at
their colonel; but the jail was left without a British guard. During
the rest of the day there was extraordinary stillness in the quarters of
the native troops. A native officer reported to an English subaltern
that the men were determined to release their comrades; but the
colonel and the brigadier, Archdale Wilson, ridiculed the story. On
Sunday evening the British battalion was assembling for church
parade when a cry was raised, "The Rifles and Artillery are coming
to disarm all the native regiments ", and an outbreak was precipitated,
which had not been definitely pre-arranged. Some hundreds of the
troopers broke open the jail and released the prisoners. Smyth,
thinking that it was his duty to warn Hewitt and Wilson, never went
near his regiment; but Captain Craigie and Lieutenant Melville
Clarke brought their own troops to the parade-ground in perfect
order. The infantry regiments were listening quietly to the remon-
strances of their officers when a trooper, galloping past, shouted that
the Europeans were coming to disarm them ; the colonel of the 1 1 th
was shot dead by men of the 20th; and the two regiments, joined by
swarms of budmashes, dispersed to plunder and to slay. An officer
rode to the telegraph office to warn the authorities at Delhi, but found
that the wire had been cut. Hewitt, an infirm old man, did nothing.
Wilson sent the dragoons, who were hastening to charge the mutineers,
on a futile errand to the jail, and when, at the head of the artillery
and the rifles, he reached the infantry lines, he found that the sepoys
were not there. ^
^ Holmes, op. cit. pp. 96 sqq. and references there cited. Cf. Wilson's letters to his wife,
ap. Journal of the United Services Institution of India^ 1923.
THE OUTBREAK 177
On the morning of 1 1 May the cavalry rode into Delhi, entered the
precincts of the palace, where they were joined by the king's de-
pendents, and, after releasing the prisoners in the jail, proceeded with
the infantry, which presently followed them, to murder every Euro-
pean whom they met and to fire every European dwelling which they
passed. In the telegraph office, outside the city, two young signallers,
hearing the uproar and being informed by native messengers of the
atrocities that were being enacted, found time before they escaped
to warn the authorities of the Panjab. The officer in charge of the
magazine, after defending it for three hours, finding that he could no
longer repel his assailants, blew up the stores of ammunition which it
contained and destroyed some hundreds of mutineers ; but the briga-
dier, without a single company of British soldiers, could effect nothing.
One of his three regiments, indeed, remained respectful : but the others
were mutinous ; several officers were murdered ; and at sunset, after he
had waited vainly for succour from Meerut, he was compelled to
retreat with the surviving officers and those women and children who
were in his charge. The miseries suffered in that flight hardened British
hearts to inffict a fierce revenge ; but the survivors told with gratitude
of kindness shown to them in their distress by Hindus through whose
villages they had passed.^
Two days after the seizure of Delhi the governor-general received
the news. Immediately he sent for all the reinforcements within his
reach, and empowered his trusted lieutenants, Henry and John
Lawrence, to act as they might think best in Oudh and the Panjab;
but, deluded by telegrams from the lieutenant-governor of the North-
western Provinces, who predicted that in a few days all danger would
be over, he rejected an offer from the governor of Bombay to send a
steamer to England with dispatches. The commander-in-chief, who,
like almost everyone else, had failed to understand the earlier symp-
toms of mutiny, and was therefore unprepared, found himself ham-
pered by want of transport and of stores. John Lawrence implored
him to free himself for action by disarming the regiments at Ambala,
and then to strike a decisive blow at Delhi; but, though the civil
officers in the Cis-Satlej states, aided by loyal Sikh chieftains, collected
carriage and supplies, he thought it best to wait for reinforcements.
At length, overruled by the insistence of the governor-general, he
moved from Ambala to Karnal, intending to march thence on i June ;
but on 27 May he died of cholera.
Sir Henry Barnard, who succeeded to the command of the army
assembled at Karnal, marched immediately for Delhi. Brigadier
Wilson, who had already left Meerut in obedience to Anson, was
expected to join him. For more than a fortnight the force which he
commanded had remained inactive. Hewitt had made no attempt
to re-establish British authority; and the villagers in the surrounding
^ Holmes, op. cit. pp. 104 sqq. and references there cited.
178 THE MUTINY
country, believing that every Englishman in Meerut had perished,
relapsed into anarchy. Wilson twice defeated mutineers who had
advanced from Delhi to oppose him, and on 7 June, reinforced by a
Gurkha battalion, joined Barnard, whose troops had avenged the
sufferings of British fugitives by many cruel deeds, a few miles north of
the city. Next day the mutineers, who had occupied a strong position
on the north-western outskirts, were again defeated ; and the victors,
encamping on the Ridge, looked down upon the high wall, with its
bastions and massive gates, which encompassed the imperial city, the
white marble dome and tall minarets of the Jamma Masjid, the lofty
red walls and the round towers of the palace overhanging the sparkling
waters of the Jumna. They had boasted that they would recapture
Delhi on the day of their arrival ; but on the Ridge they were to
remain for many weary weeks. To understand what they achieved
and suffered, it is necessary to trace the outline of events in other parts
of the peninsula.
The effects of the outbreak at Meerut had been instantly felt in the
Doab — that part of the North-Western Provinces which extended
between the Jumna and the Ganges. After Wilson marched to join
Barnard, the only British troops available were one regiment and one
battery at Agra, the headquarters of the government. The lieutenant-
governor, John Golvin, who, on hearing the news of the seizure of
Delhi, proposed to take refuge in the fort, was soon persuaded that
there was no real danger. His subordinates, however, were becoming
convinced that, although he had proved himself an excellent adminis-
trator in times of peace, he lacked the qualities required to cope with
difficulties which it was impossible wholly to overcome.^ After a
succession of mutinies in outlying stations he issued a proclamation,
for which Canning ordered him to substitute another, more precisely
worded, promising lenient treatment to all mutineers who would give
up their arms, except those who had instigated revolt or taken part in
the murder of Europeans ; but it was answered by another mutiny,
and on the following day, yielding to the magistrate, he ordered the
native regiments at Agra to be disarmed. Had he done so a fortnight
earlier, a wing of the British regiment would have been set free, and
much disorder might have been prevented. The infection had already
spread to Rohilkhand. Before the end of the first week in June every
regiment in that division had mutinied; many Europeans had been
murdered; Khan Bahadur Khan, a Muhammadan pensioner of the
government, had proclaimed himself the viceroy of the king of Delhi;
and as he was not strong enough to keep the peace, anarchy was
rampant.
The history of the Mutiny in the Doab and in Rohilkhand furnishes
the most important evidence for determining the nature of the rising.
The hesitating demeanour of many mutineers, the practical loyalty
* Holmes, op. cit. pp. 568-73. But cf. Golvin, Life of J. R. Coloin, pp. 190 sqg.
THE DOAB AND ROHILKHAND 179
of others, which cannot be explained away on any theory of dissimula-
tion, up to the very day of mutiny, the fact that few detachments
committed themselves until the news that others had done so or the
infection of civil disturbances overcame their fidelity, and that some-
times a mere accident occasioned the outbreak, prove that, however
carefully the ringleaders may have endeavoured to secure concerted
action, the movement was most imperfectly organised. "Sir*', said
a loyal Brahman sepoy to a British officer, "there is one knave and
nine fools ; the knave compromises the others, and then tells them it
is too late to draw back."
Historically, however, it is more important to learn how the civil
population acted than to analyse the phenomena of the Mutiny itself
When the defection of the Bengal army threatened the raj with
destruction, Hindus and Muhammadans alike, though, notwith-
standing their grievances, they acknowledged its benevolence, justice
and efficiency, relapsed into the turbulent habits of their ancestors.
Rajas summoned their retainers and proclaimed their resolve to
establish their authority as vassals of the king of Delhi. Muhammadan
fanatics waved green flags and shouted for the revival of the supremacy
of Islam. Rajputs and Jats renewed old feuds and fought with one
another to the death. Gujars robbed the mail-carts, plundered peace-
ful villages, and murdered the villagers. The police, who had
generally been recruited from the dangerous classes, felt that nothing
was to be gained by supporting a doomed government, and joined
the criminals. Dispossessed landowners assembled their old tenants,
and hunted out the speculators who had bought up their estates.
Insolvent debtors mobbed and slaughtered the money-lenders. Sati
and other barbarous customs revived. Public works ceased; civil
justice could only be administered in a few favoured spots ; education
was either stopped or frequently interrupted. In short, excepting the
summary administration of criminal justice and a partial collection
of the revenue, the organism of government was paralysed.^
On the other hand, many landowners were passively, and some few
actively, loyal. More than one moulvi had the courage to proclaim
that rebellion was a sin, and a fair proportion of Indian officials, some
at the cost of their lives, stood resolutely at their posts. Finally, except
hardened criminals, hereditary robbers, and those who knew that they
could expect no mercy, the people acquiesced readily enough in the
re-establishment of regular government.
Much depended upon the protected princes, and fortunately
Sindhia, influenced by his prime minister, Dinkar Rao, and the
political agent. Charters Macpherson, remained steadily loyal,
keeping the Gwalior contingent and his own army, both of which
were ripe for mutiny, inactive within his territory. In Rajputana, the
inhabitants of which, under loyal native rulers, were generally well-
1 Gf. e.g. Durand, Life of Sir A. Lyall, p. 69.
12-2
i8o THE MUTINY
disposed, the eldest of the famous Lawrence brothers upheld British
authority, despite mutinies at Nimach and Nasirabad, throughout
the crisis ;i but at Agra towards the end of June the approach of the
mutineers compelled Colvin to remove the English women and
children into the fort, where he had hitherto forbidden them to take
refuge. Brigadier Polwhele, the military chief, who, believing that
the mutineers intended to join their comrades at Delhi, had resolved
to remain on the defensive, allowed himself to be persuaded to attack
them, and suffered a defeat: but the garrison, thanks to Sindhia and
Dinkar Rao, who still contrived to keep their troops inactive, escaped
a siege; and throughout the summer volunteers, raised by the magis-
trate and collector of Meerut, did much to restore order in his
district. 2
Meanwhile important events occurred along the line between
Calcutta and Delhi. Fortunately, during the three weeks that followed
the outbreak at Meerut, the sepoys remained absolutely passive. But
the governor-general, deceived by this lull, failed to take full ad-
vantage of it. Rejecting offers made by various bodies to serve as
volunteers for the protection of Calcutta, on the ground that "the
mischief caused by a passing and groundless panic had already been
arrested",^ he refused to disarm the sepoys at Barrackpore because
he trusted the profession of loyalty which they were careful to make,
and feared that the troops at other places might be exasperated.
Towards the middle of June he found it necessary to authorise both
these measures, which, if they had been adopted in time, would
have enabled him to send two British regiments to threatened stations.
Meanwhile, however, he had been diligently preparing for the arrival
of the expected reinforcements ; and the undeserved odium which he
incurred by the famous "Clemency Order" and various local enact-
ments in no respect weakened his authority.
Fortunately Patna, the most important provincial town in the
Presidency of Bengal, was in strong hands. William Tayler, the com-
missioner, had had a dispute with the lieutenant-governor, Frederick
Halliday, who intended to transfer him, on the first colourable pretext,
to another post. There was not a single British soldier at Patna, and
at Dinapore, only ten miles off, the British regiment was detained by
the necessity of watching the sepoy troops, which Canning refused to
disarm. A Sikh battalion, which Tayler summoned to his assistance,
arrived on 8 June; but the commandant reported that it had been
insulted on the march by the rural population. Halliday insisted that
a mutiny of the Dinapore sepoys was inconceivable, and General
Lloyd, the commander of the division, whom Tayler urged to disarm
* Cf. George Lawrence, Reminiscences , pp. 278 sgq.
2 Major Williams, Narrative, pp. 11, 12, 14; Dunlop, Service and Adventures with the
Khakee Ressalah.
• Cf. Pari. Papers t 1857, xxx, 20-3.
PATNA i8i
them, replied that he could keep them under control. Left to his own
resources, Tayler arrested three moulvis, who directed the Wahabis
— the most dangerous Muhammadans in the city — knowing that he
would thus ensure the obedience of their disciples, and, feeling that
he was now master of the situation, required all the citizens to sur-
render their weapons. A riot which broke out on 3 July was sup-
pressed by the Sikhs, and the ringleaders were hanged. ^ Supported
by three Indians, who gave him information which only natives could
obtain, Tayler was able to keep order in the city; but the outlying
districts were still imperilled. British troops were about to pass through
Dinapore; but Canning left Lloyd to decide whether he would use
them. Unable to nerve himself to take the decisive step, the latter
thought it enough to remove the percussion caps from the magazine,
and afterwards, though the British force was then at dinner, ordered
the sepoys to surrender those which they carried. They replied by
firing on their officers, and, joined by a Rajput noble, Kunwar Singh,
who had been ungenerously treated by the Revenue Board of Bengal,
made a raid upon Arrah, the chief town of the most turbulent district
in the Patna division. The European residents, warned of their
approach and reinforced by fifty Sikhs, whom Tayler had sent to their
assistance, took refuge in a small building, which had been fortified
and provisioned by its provident owner. A force sent by Lloyd to the
rescue was ambushed and overwhelmed ; but the little garrison con-
tinued to repel every attack. Major Vincent Eyre of the Bengal
Artillery, who, though he had been ordered to proceed to Allahabad,
assumed the responsibility of attempting to succour them, and per-
suaded the commandant of an infantry detachment to serve under
him, defeated the rebels near Arrah, thus not only relieving the
garrison, but quelling an insurrection which had threatened the whole
of Bengal and restoring the safety of communication between Calcutta
and the north-west. ^ Before this success, however, Tayler, foreseeing
that if the garrison should be overpowered, the besiegers would over-
run the province of Bihar, ordered the district officers at the most
exposed stations to withdraw to Patna. ^ Halliday, stigmatising the
order as an act of cowardice, dismissed him from his post ; but at a
later time, while many of the foremost men in India declared their
conviction that he had saved Bihar, two ex-members of Canning's
council, retracting the censure which they had joined in passing upon
him, added their testimony to the value of his services, and the chief
of the three moulvis whom he had arrested was sent to the Andaman
Islands as a convicted felon. While Tayler was crushing rebellion in
Bihar, the valley of the Ganges was in peril. In Benares, as dangerous
a stronghold of Brahminical as Patna of Muhammadan fanaticism,
^ Tayler, Thirty-eight Tears in India, ii, 237 sqq.
2 Holmes, op. cit. pp. 195 sqq. and references.
' Tayler, op. cit. 11, 242 sqq.
1 82 THE MUTINY
there were only thirty English gunners to watch the 37th Native
Infantry, a regiment of Irregular Cavalry, and the Ludhiana Sikhs.
On 4 June it was known that the sepoys at an outlying station had
mutinied, and as a hundred and fifty British soldiers from Dinapore
were by this time on the spot, Colonel Neill of the ist Madras
Fusiliers, who had arrived on the previous day with a detachment of
his corps, persuaded the brigadier to disarm the Bengal regiment. The
affair, for which the brigadier declared himself responsible, was mis-
managed. Panic-stricken by the approach of the British troops, the
men fired at their officers ; the Sikhs, some of whom were disloyal,
while the rest were apprehensive of treachery, charged the guns ; and
a disaster was barely averted by a swift discharge of grape. The
sedition that followed in the city was suppressed by the judge, aided
by influential Indians ; Neill put to death all the mutineers who were
caught; and in the surrounding country, which was placed by the
governor-general under martial law, rebels, suspects, and even dis-
orderly boys were executed by infuriated officers and unofficial
British residents who volunteered to serve as hangmen.
Neill had already pushed on for Allahabad, which, standing at the
confluence of the Jumna and the Ganges, commanded the communi-
cation between the lower and the upper provinces of Northern India.
Yet, though Outram had implored both Canning and Anson to
provide for its safety, it had been left without a single British soldier
until, after the outbreak at Meerut, sixty invalid artillerymen arrived.
On 19 May the 6th Native Infantry volunteered to march against
Delhi ; on 6 June, after their confiding colonel had read to them a letter
in which the governor-general expressed his gratitude for their offer,
they mutinied, and murdered five of their officers. Sedition, pillage and
arson followed ; the railway works were destroyed ; and the telegraph
wires were torn down. The fort, indeed, was saved by Captain
Brasyer of the Ludhiana Sikhs, who, constraining his men, though
they had just heard of the slaughter of their comrades at Benares, to
support him, disarmed a company, forming part of the garrison, of
the regiment that had mutinied ; but though a detachment of the
Madras Fusiliers arrived on the next day, anarchy was rampant when
Neill appeared with forty of his men. Within a week, despite physical
prostration, he restored order in the fort, where British volunteers
were demoralised by drunkenness, and by ruthless severity suppressed
all disturbance in the districts. Conjointly with Brasyer he had saved
the most important post between Calcutta and Cawnpore, and con-
verted it into an advanced base. But while he strove to discriminate
between the innocent and the guilty, volunteers and Sikhs slaughtered
every Indian whom they met, and villages, from which harmless old
men and women with infants at their breasts were forced to flee, were
remorselessly burned. The Old Testament was then revered, and
Neill, who was preparing to dispatch a column to Cawnpore under
CAWNPORE 183
Major Renaud of the Madras Fusiliers, gave him instructions (which
Havelock approved) in the spirit of Joshua.^
The garrison of Gawnpore consisted of four sepoy regiments, with
which were associated fifty-nine British gunners and a few invaHds.
Sir Hugh Wheeler, who commanded the division, determined imme-
diately after the outbreak at Meerut to secure a refuge for the non-
combatants. The only defensible position was the magazine, a strong
roomy building, protected on its northern side by the Ganges; but
Wheeler decided against it on the ground that before he could occupy
it he would be obliged to withdraw its sepoy guard, which might
precipitate a rising. The sepoy regiments, if they mutinied, would, he
believed, hasten at once to Delhi, and, at the worst, he would only have
to repel a mobof budmashes before succour should arrive. Itis probable
that, if he had waited for reinforcements, which he was soon to receive,
he could have occupied the magazine without resistance ; but he con-
tented himself with throwing up an entrenchment, which any active
lad could leap over, near the north-eastern corner of the town. On
4 June the native cavalry, followed by the ist Infantry, mutinied.
Next day, the 56th was persuaded to join them. The bulk of the 53rd
was still standing its ground when Wheeler impulsively ordered his
artillery to fire, and all but eighty, who to the last remained faithful,
fled. The Nana Sahib, whose palace was near Gawnpore, promised to
lead the mutineers to Delhi, but, influenced by one of his advisers,
persuaded them to remain and besiege the entrenchment.
For three weeks the little garrison — some four hundred English
fighting men, more than seventy of whom were invalids, with the
faithful sepoys, defended their women and children against a con-
tinuous fire, enduring hunger, thirst, exposure to the midsummer sun,
the torture of wounds for which they had no remedy, and, finally,
despair. On the seventh day and on the centenary of Plassey the
besiegers attempted an assault, but were resolutely repelled. Two
days later the Nana offered a safe passage to Allahabad to every
member of the garrison "who had not been connected with the acts
of Lord Dalhousie". Wheeler reluctantly accepted the offer. Next
day terms of surrender were arranged, including a proviso that the
defenders should be allowed to retain their arms ; but the guns were
to be delivered over to the enemy. On the morning of the 27 th a wan
and ragged company quitted the entrenchment, and, surrounded by
a great crowd of onlookers, proceeded to embark on thatched barges,
which the Nana had provided. Tantia Topi, his trusted counsellor,
superintended the arrangements.
Immediately afterwards the thatch, strewn with glowing cinders,
burst into flame ; grape-shot and bullets, fired by sepoys who had been
posted behind cover, poured into the throng; troopers rode into the
water and sabred the women. Suddenly a messenger from the Nana
1 Gf. Kaye, op. cit. ii, 268 n.
r84 THE MUTINY
ordered that no more women or children were to be killed, and the
survivors, a hundred and twenty-five, were dragged back to the town.
The only boat that escaped, without oars, rudder, or food, was fired
upon by sepoys who moved along the bank. On the third day it
drifted into a side current. Descrying villagers and sepoys about to
attack them, two officers, a sergeant, and eleven privates leaped
ashore, scattered the crowd, and fought their way back — to find that
the boat had drifted far away. The officers, Mowbray Thomson and
Delafosse, who with two privates alone survived the ordeals of that
day, found shelter, after swimming six miles, with a friendly raja of
Oudh. The boat was overtaken, and the passengers — wounded men,
women and children — were brought back to Gawnpore. The women
and children were incarcerated in one building with the hundred and
twenty-five who had survived the first massacre; the men were put
to death. A few days later the captives were transferred to a small
house called the Bibigarh, where, with fugitives from the Doab, whose
companions had been already slain by order of the Nana, they were
subjected to the grossest indignities. On 15 July the Nana heard that
his troops had been defeated by an avenging army. The few men who
had been suffered to live thus far were instantly killed in his presence ;
the women and children, after sepoys had refused to shoot them, were
hacked to death by a band of ruffians. Perhaps, as it has been alleged,
he was persuaded by a woman in his zenana to permit the final
massacre; at all events it is probable that revenge for the cruelties
committed by Englishmen and Sikhs at Benares, at Allahabad, and
on Renaud's march, was one motive for the tragedy of Gawnpore.^
Throughout the Mutiny Gawnpore was linked closely with Luck-
now, the capital of Oudh. Sir Henry Lawrence, who had been
appointed chief commissioner in January, speedily redressed the
wrongs committed by his predecessor. He had spent his official life
in toiling for the welfare of Indians; his sympathetic nature won their
devotion and the love of his own countrymen; and no one was better
fitted to prepare for the ordeal which he foresaw. "I have struck up
a friendship", he wrote to Ganning, "with two of the best and
wealthiest of the chiefs, and am on good terms with all." He im-
prisoned a moulvi, who preached a holy war at Faizabad. But he
knew that with the sepoys conflict was inevitable ; and a durbar, held
in his private garden before he heard of the outbreak at Meerut, in
which he exhorted representatives of the sepoy regiments to pay no
heed to agitators, and rewarded individuals who had proved their
fidelity, was regarded by those who attended it as a sign of fear.
Lawrence intended that the Europeans, in case a siege should
become inevitable, should take refuge in the residency and its out-
lying buildings, which stood on a plateau bounded on the north by
the Gumti, a tributary of the Ganges. The roof of the principal
* Cf. Holmes, op. cit. pp. 227 sqq. and references.
LUCKNOW 185
edifice commanded a view of the city and its environs. Eastward and
westward along the southern bank of the river extended an irregular
space, covered by palaces and mosques, surrounded with gardens:
beyond them a vast maze of sordid streets stretched southward and
eastward as far as a canal, which entered the river three miles east
of the residency and was crossed by the Gawnpore road.
Lawrence began his preparations by amending the distribution of
the troops. The only British regiment — the 32nd Foot — was quartered
in barracks about a mile and a half east of the residency, while five
regiments of native infantry and one of cavalry were located at various
points within the city and on both sides of the river. On 16 May
Lawrence, yielding to the financial commissioner, Martin Gubbins,
and the military authorities, moved a detachment of the 32nd to the
residency, then at the mercy of a sepoy guard. Next day he trans-
ferred the women and children of the regiment to the residency, sent
the remaining companies to watch the native troops in a cantonment
north of the river, and stationed a corps of Europeans and picked
sepoys in the Machi Bhawan, a dilapidated fort, west of the residency,
which would overawe the city and might be useful as a temporary
post. Two days later, having been invested at his own request with
plenary military power, he assumed command of the whole force in
Oudh. He had already begun to repair the Machi Bhawan; a few
days later he set to work on the residency and its annexes ; and soon
afterwards the English ladies were warned to take refuge there with
their children. Gubbins urged him to disarm the native regiments;
but, fearing that to do so would impel the troops at outlying stations
to mutiny, and knowing that loyal sepoys would be needed to aid in
defending the residency, he refused. On the 30th mutiny broke out
in the cantonments north of the city, and three officers were murdered ;
but more than five hundred sepoys sided with the British ; and, although
on the next day there was a rising in the city, Lawrence had posted
a force to guard the connecting road, and thus prevented the mu-
tineers from abetting the rioters. "We now", he wrote to Canning,
"know our friends and enemies."
Nevertheless the mutiny produced disastrous eflfects. Hitherto the
country districts had been tranquil: the courts of justice remained
open : and the revenue was punctually paid. But in the first few days
of June the sepoys at every station rose. Many officers, many Euro-
peans, were murdered ; but many fugitives owed their lives to Indians
whose hearts had been won by the sympathy with which Lawrence
redressed their wrongs. The talukdars, of course, ejected those upon
whom their estates had been bestowed, plundered rich citizens, and
wreaked vengeance upon old antagonists; but very few aided the
mutineers, and some actually sent supplies to Lawrence for provi-
sioning the residency.
Meanwhile in Lucknow mutineers were being daily hanged, and,
1 86 THE MUTINY
although after the outbreak the Indian merchants no longer carried on
business, the administration of justice was not interrupted, and order
was fairly well maintained. But under the grievous announcements
from the districts Lawrence's health broke down, and he was forced
to delegate his powers to a council, of which Gubbins was appointed
president. Three days later, hearing with indignation that his col-
league was bent upon getting rid of those sepoys who had not yet been
disarmed, he resumed his authority, and devoted himself, despite
a mutiny of the military police, to the work of strengthening the
residency. Gubbins, however, was constantly urging him to attack the
rebels assembling in the neighbourhood ; and gradually, perhaps sub-
consciously, he allowed himself to be persuaded.^ On the last day of
June, although his preparations were incomplete, he marched in a
north-easterly direction against the advanced guard. Before the
march began the British troops who formed a part of his force were
exhausted by many days and nights of labour ; and they had advanced
little more than three miles when the colonel, supported by one of
the surgeons, declared that they were unfit to go into action. Brigadier
Inglis, to whom this protest had been made, was asked by Lawrence's
aide-de-camp whether they could go on, and replied, evasively but
significantly, "Of course they could, if ordered". About a mile
farther, near the village of Chinhat, they encountered the enemy and
suffered an overwhelming defeat, but succeeded, though with the loss
of one-third of their number, in reaching the entrenchment. In a
scene of terror and confusion the siege began. Next day by Lawrence's
order the Machi Bhawan was blown up, and, while the mutineers
were plundering the city, the detachment that had occupied it
marched noiselessly to reinforce the garrison. On 2 July, while Indian
servants, tempted by extraordinary rates of pay, were working
feverishly at unfinished bastions and terrified women were praying
in their rooms, Lawrence, who, despite his final error, had made a
defence possible, was mortally wounded by the bursting of a shell ;
and two days later, after giving his last instructions to Inglis and
imploring him never to surrender, he died, mourned by all.
Less than a thousand British soldiers, aided by about a hundred and
fifty civilians and seven hundred loyal sepoys, were now besieged by
some ten thousand disciplined troops and a band of talukdars' re-
tainers. Fortunately, the besiegers were under incompetent leaders,
whom they treated with contempt. The entrenchment, about a mile
in circuit, enclosed detached houses and other buildings, the defences
of which — mud banks and trenches, palisades, crows'-feet, and similar
obstacles — were still incomplete. On the east, south and west, how-
ever, outlying buildings served as a protection against artillery, and
made it impossible for storming parties to advance in strength : the
one open space where the besiegers could assemble for a general
» Gf. Kaye, op. cit, in, 669-71.
HAVELOGK 187
assault or plant batteries to breach the defences was on the north,
where a high bank, scarped and strengthened by a parapet, formed
the strongest part of the position. Still, no place within was safe.
Though the gunnery of the besiegers was erratic, sharpshooters kept
up a galling fire from the surrounding houses. Numerous mines were
sunk with the object of breaching the defences ; but almost all were
stopped or destroyed before they could reach their aim. On 2 1 July
a sepoy pensioner, named Angad, made his way into the entrench-
ment, and announced that Havelock, having thrice defeated the Nana,
was in possession of Gawnpore; but weeks passed away, and the
expected relief did not arrive. Three several assaults were vigorously
repelled; but the defenders, whose numbers daily diminished, were
becoming exhausted by incessant toil, and disease still further wasted
their ranks. The chief of the commissariat was disabled; and though
there was actually sufficient grain to last for many months, Inglis
supposed that the stock was nearly exhausted, and reduced the rations.
Towards the end of August Angad appeared with a letter containing
the warning that Havelock could not arrive before twenty-five days
and the ominous injunction, "Do not negotiate, but rather perish
sword in hand". On 16 September, when more than a third of the
British soldiers had fallen, he was sent out with dispatches for the last
time.^
Henry Havelock, who had fought with distinction in Burma,
Afghanistan, Gwalior and the Panjab, had abandoned the ambition
which he had qualified himself by constant study to fulfil, when, old
and physically feeble but in spirit indomitable, he was appointed to
command an army for the relief of Gawnpore and Lucknow. A few
hours before the siege of the residency began he reached Allahabad.
On the same day Renaud started for Gawnpore at the head of the
little column which Neill had organised ; on 3 July the destruction of
Wheeler's force was announced, and a few days later Havelock, with
a thousand British soldiers, a hundred and thirty of Brasyer's Sikhs,
twenty volunteer troops and six guns, began his march. Gharred
ruins of forsaken villages, corpses hanging from trees along the road,
testified that Renaud had even exceeded his instructions. On the
1 2th Havelock overtook him; within the next three days, although he
was obliged to reinforce Neill with a hundred of the Sikhs and to
disarm Renaud's mutinous cavalry, he gained three victories ; and on
the 1 6th, beneath the fiercest sun which the soldiers had yet felt, he
defeated five thousand men, whom the Nana himself commanded.
Next day the victors entered Gawnpore and, hurrying to the Bibigarh,
saw bullet-marks, sword-cuts, clotted blood, shreds of clothing, and
women's long tresses — the signs of the final massacre.
A week elapsed before Havelock was able to push on. Neill, who
arrived on 20 July, was to defend the recovered city; and Havelock,
* Gf. Holmes, op. cit. pp. 244 sqq.
1 88 THE MUTINY
being unable to place more than three hundred men at his disposal,
fortified the position close to the river, which he ordered him to
occupy. The bridge had been destroyed by mutineers, and it was with
great difficulty that the passage of the river, which, swollen by the
rains, was flowing with torrential force, was accomplished in suc-
cessive trips by boats. On the 25th Havelock, whose force now num-
bered fifteen hundred, resumed his march. After two more victories
he had advanced about half the way when, reflecting that his little
army was daily wasted by cholera and the enemy's fire, that the
recent mutiny at Dinapore would delay reinforcements, and that, if
he persisted, hundreds must still fall before he could approach the
residency, he reluctantly decided to return. From Mangalwar, only
five miles from Cawnpore, which he reached on the last day of July,
he wrote to inform Neill that he could not attempt to relieve Lucknow
until he received a reinforcement of a thousand men and another
battery of guns. Aglow with indignation, Neill presumed to admonish
his superior, who sternly replied: "Understand. . .that a considera-
tion of the obstruction which would arise to the public service . . .
alone prevents me from placing you under immediate arrest".
Nevertheless, reinforced by no more than one company of British
infantry and a half-battery, and hearing from Calcutta that for two
months he must expect no more, he once more set his face towards
Lucknow, advanced to the point which he had reached before, and
there gained his seventh victory. But the reasons that had before
compelled him to retreat were hardly less cogent now. The mutinous
Gwalior contingent was reported to be threatening Cawnpore; the
zamindars, encouraged by his recent retirement, were arming their
matchlockmen ; the cholera was unabated. Anxiously considering
what his duty required, he returned again to Mangalwar. The resolve,
as he himself recorded, was the most painful that he had ever formed.
Meanwhile Neill, believing that "severity at the first is mercy in
the end", had determined to avenge the massacre in the Bibigarh by
a punishment that should never be forgotten. Every prisoner whom
he considered especially guilty was to remove the stain of blood from
an allotted space. "The task", so ran the order,
will be made as revolting to his feelings as possible, and the Provost-Marshal will
use the lash in forcing anyone objecting to complete his task. After properly
cleaning up his portion, the culprit is to be immediately hanged.
But Neill, who had told his chief that his retreat had destroyed the
prestige of England, was compelled to appeal to him for help ; for
four thousand rebels were threatening to overwhelm his little force.
Havelock, resolved to show that he was undismayed, first advanced
again and routed them, then recrossed the Ganges and re-entered
Cawnpore. The talukdars of Oudh, who, with a few exceptions, had
hitherto remained passive, now began for the most part, under
pressure from the rebel durbar, to send their retainers into the field.
HAVELOCK 189
Three days after his return Havelock defeated the force which had
threatened Neill, but on the next day learned that he had been super-
seded by Sir James Outram, who, moreover, was appointed chief
commissioner of Oudh. Reinforcements were by this time coming up
the Ganges. On 15 September Outram reached Gawnpore, and on
the following day issued the famous order in which he announced his
intention of leaving to Havelock the honour of relieving Lucknow
and of serving under him as a volunteer. But in the emotional nature
of Outram generosity was not quite unalloyed : he intended to be not
only a volunteer, but a counsellor with a decisive voice.
Havelock's force, now more than doubled, numbered about three
thousand two hundred men. A floating bridge was thrown across the
Ganges; and on 21 September the final advance began. Havelock
had learned from Angad that if the defenders of the residency were not
relieved before the end of the month, they would have no meat left.
Driving the rebels before them, the troops on the 23rd captured the
Alambagh, a strong place two miles from Lucknow, where they were
heartened by the announcement that Delhi had been taken by
assault. Next day, while they were resting, Havelock and Outram
considered what plan they should adopt on the morrow. Although
rains had made the open country impassable for the heavy guns,
Havelock argued that the best course would be to cross the Gumti,
then, after a detour, to recross it by a bridge north of the residency,
and, thus relieved from the perils of street-fighting, to traverse the
narrow space that separated the bridge from the entrenchment.
Outram dissented from this view, and, though he had resigned the
command, dictated to a staff-officer the orders for the advance. The
troops were to cross the canal by the Gharbagh bridge, south of the
city, then, avoiding the direct road, where the rebels were prepared to
resist, turn to the right along the bank, and, keeping outside the city,
move past the palace to their goal. Havelock, who had been made
apparently responsible for what he did not approve, was obliged to
give way.
The morning of the 25th was beautifully fine. Havelock rose early
and spent some time in prayer. The column advanced under fire to
the bridge, which was commanded by sharpshooters and defended
on the farther side by five guns. The Madras Fusiliers carried it with
a rush. While the 78th Highlanders held the bridge-head, the rest of
the column crossed, and pushed on almost unopposed till they came
within three-quarters of a mile from the residency, when they were
met with a heavy fire from the Kaisar Bagh ; but, replying as best they
could, they soon found shelter in a court beneath the walls of the
Ghattar Manzil. The Highlanders, who had diverged by a shorter
road, presently appeared and found themselves at the head of the
column. While soldiers, camels, guns and litters bearing wounded
men were thronging into the court, Outram and Havelock were
I go THE MUTINY
observed in animated discussion. Outram, arguing that the enemy
would expect the column to advance through the streets, desired to
halt for the night, thus allowing the rear-guard to close up, and to
move on next morning through the successive courts: Havelock,
seeing that the enemy would then have time to occupy the courts,
sharing in the ardour of the soldiers, and fearing that the rebels might
succeed by a desperate effort in overpowering the garrison, implored
him to push on. The discussion waxed warm. Outram lost his temper ;
but he gave way. "Let us on then", he cried, "in God's name."
Highlanders, Sikhs, and Madras Fusiliers moved successively out of
the court; Neill fell from his horse at the exit, shot through the head;
but the column, plunging under a hail of bullets from adjoining
houses through trenches which had been cut across the road, and
descrying the flag waving on the roof of the residency, struggled un-
falteringly on till they entered the entrenchment. But though the
garrison had been reinforced, they had still to wait for the relief that
would enable the non-combatants to be removed to a place of safety.
Even more important were the events that occurred at Delhi, the
head-centre of revolt, and in the Panjab, with which it was throughout
connected. The officers whom Dalhousie had selected to administer
that province were a harmonious brotherhood. Except in the Pesha-
war valley, which was exposed to the raids of turbulent borderers, the
people had been disarmed ; but in the matter of land-revenue they
had been generously treated.^ Between Sikhs and Hindustanis there
was a national, between Sikhs and Muhammadans a religious, anti-
pathy. A perennial danger had been removed when Herbert Edwardes
won the consent of Dost Muhammad, the amir of Afghanistan, to a
treaty of alliance. The sepoys numbered thirty-six thousand : but ten
thousand British soldiers were quartered in the province; and the
Panjabi Irregulars, some thirteen thousand strong, next to the Gurkhas
the finest native troops in India, were an additional source of strength.
When the telegram announcing the seizure of Delhi reached Lahore,
John Lawrence was away; but the judicial commissioner, Robert
Montgomery, was a man of action, and the military officers supported
him. The sepoys at the neighbouring cantonment of Mianmir,
though they outnumbered the Europeans by eight to one, were
adroitly disarmed ; the native portion of the garrison of Lahore was
treated likewise; and on the same day Montgomery sent letters of
warning and instruction to the principal civil officers, nearly all of
whom justified his confidence. Though a mutiny broke out at Feroze-
pore, where the commandant failed to follow the example of Mian-
mir, three important stations — Amritsar, where the rural population
were thoroughly loyal, Kangra, which dominated the hill-country on
the north, and Phillaur, commanding the Grand Trunk Road — were
instantly secured.
* Cf. Holmes, op. cit. pp. 33-4; also p. 91, supra.
THE PANJAB 191
Meanwhile momentous decisions were formed at Peshawar.
Herbert Edwardes, the commissioner, John Nicholson, the deputy-
commissioner, who had so tamed the lawless frontiersmen of Bannu
that in the closing year of his rule there was not a single attempt at
crime, Sydney Cotton, the brigadier, and Neville Chamberlain, the
commander of the Panjabi Irregulars, met in a council of war. The
principal resolutions, confirmed in due course by Lawrence, were that
a movable column should be formed to repress mutiny wherever it
might occur, and that recruits should be enlisted from the province
and the frontier, to absorb and utilise the lawless. During the next
few days Nicholson, in the absence of Edwardes, who had been sum-
moned to confer with Lawrence, set a watch over every ferry on the
Indus ; but before Edwardes returned treasonable letters addressed to
sepoys were intercepted, and when Nicholson tried to persuade the
chiefs of the valley to raise their followers, the answer was significant :
" Show us that you are the stronger, and there shall be no lack of aid ".
At midnight on 21 May Edwardes and Nicholson heard that the
55th Native Infantry at Naushahra had mutinied. It seemed probable
that a detachment of the same regiment at Mardan had followed their
example, and that the troops at Peshawar would soon be infected.
The two friends instantly awakened Cotton, who agreed with them
that the infantry regiments must be disarmed; and in the morning
all, except those who were needed to carry on the work of the station,
were forced, despite the protests of their officers, to pile arms. Imme-
diately afterwards a multitude of men, protesting their loyalty, eagerly
offered to enlist. It was now possible to act against the 55th at
Mardan, who had been joined by the mutineers from Naushahra.
Flying before the force that marched against them, they were hunted
by Nicholson, who with his mounted police was alone able to overtake
them, into the hills adjoining Kashmir, where the survivors were
destroyed by the hill-men, or enslaved, or executed after they sur-
rendered in despair. Meanwhile Edwardes and Cotton, compelling
the disarmed sepoys to attend, were hanging or blowing from guns
deserters and mutineers ; and, having proved themselves the stronger,
they had no difficulty in enlisting the recruits whom they required.
Not every station, however, was so firmly held. At Jalandhar, in
the opposite extremity of the province, the brigadier neglected to
disarm his sepoys, and when they mutinied delayed to pursue them;
but the deputy-commissioner of Ludhiana, through whose district
they passed on their way to Delhi, did all that one man could to repair
the error, and speedily put a stop to the commotion which their
presence caused. Lawrence, fearing that the sepoys at Multan would
rise as soon as they heard of the mutiny, and knowing that the loss of
that station would involve the loss of the Southern Panjab, determined
to disarm the garrison, although, for want of an adequate British force,
he had hitherto shrunk from the attempt. Major Crawford Chamber-
192 THE MUTINY
lain, in whom he had more confidence than in the commandant, was
entrusted with the duty, which he successfully performed. "The dis-
arming at Mooltan", said Lawrence, "was a turning point in the
Punjab crisis, second only in importance to the disarmings at Lahore
and Peshawar."
Lawrence was thinking not only how he could save the Panjab, but
how he could contribute to the recovery of Delhi. As soon as he saw
that the Panjabi soldiers had no fellow-feeling with the Hindustanis,
he resolved to compensate for the losses entailed by mutiny and de-
sertion by augmenting their numbers ; and from first to last thirty-four
thousand Panjabi troops were raised. A 6 per cent, loan, to be repaid
within one year, first opened by the commissioner of the Cis-Satlej
states, was soon extended to the whole province ; and though bankers
and merchants were chary in contributing, the chiefs who had helped
the government with their arms subscribed liberally. The police, loyal
from the outset, were strengthened. Criminals were ruthlessly
punished, and every plunderer who was caught was forced to make
restitution; but there was no great increase in violent crime. The
treasure in the various stations was secured with the loss of not more
than ten thousand pounds. Some districts remained absolutely tranquil
throughout, and the comparatively few disturbances that arose,
generally from distrust of the stability of British rule, were mostly
traceable to the machinations of Hindustanis, large numbers of whom
were expelled. Nearly all the civil courts remained open; the revenue
was paid almost in full; and attendance at the government schools
was but little diminished. In the Cis-Satlej states, where it was not
less important to maintain order than in Peshawar in order to repel
the influx of mutiny from the east, the task was exceptionally difficult.
The mixed population, more akin to the Hindustanis than to the
Panjabis, sympathised with the mutineers, and violent crimes in-
creased alarmingly : but the commissioner, Barnes, supported by the
rajas of Patiala, Nabha and Jhind, and by the Sikh portion of the
inhabitants, stamped out every symptom of revolt; and by the end of
July the crisis was over. So successfully, in short, was the Panjab
ruled that Lawrence, loyally aided by Bartle Frere, the commissioner
of Sind, who sent battalion after battalion to support him, was able
to supply the army at Delhi with stores of every kind and to reinforce
it by troops of all arms, British and Panjabi. The Guides, that famous
corps of frontiersmen which left Mardan when the seizure of Delhi
was announced, marched for three weeks at the rate of twenty-seven
miles a day, encamped on the Ridge on the day after Barnard arrived,
and within three hours engaged the mutineers. Twenty-eight years
later a civilian, himself destined to rule the Panjab, listened in his
novitiate to Sikhs who proudly related how they had fought for the
raj in the days of Nicholson.^
* O'EKvyer, India as I knew it, p. 40.
THE SIEGE OF DELHI 193
But when Barnard took command, his army, far too small to invest
Delhi, could not attempt without siege artillery to breach the walls.
All that he could do was to cling to the Ridge; and with this object
he posted piquets at various buildings, the most important of which
were Hindu Rao's house on the right and the Flagstaff Tower on the
left. On the fourth day Metcalfe House, between the Ridge and the
city, was captured and placed in communication with the Flagstaff
Tower, and Barnard was persuaded to sanction a plan for a coup-de-
main; but an accident prevented it from being attempted, and an
amended plan was so strongly opposed by his advisers that he declined
to accept it. In the next week, however, the assailants made some
progress. The possession of Metcalfe House had made it impossible
to turn their left; successive attempts to capture Hindu Rao's house
were repulsed ; and although the mutineers made a great effort on the
centenary of Plassey, they were expelled from an important building
in the suburb of Sabzi-Mandi, south-west of the Ridge, the loss of
which prevented them from attacking the British rear without a long
detour. Reinforcements had already begun to arrive; and Colonel
Baird Smith, who on 3 July took over the post of chief engineer,
destroyed several bridges over canals on the rear and the south-west
of the Ridge, and thus made the position comparatively secure. But
the mutineers also had been reinforced; many British soldiers had
fallen or succumbed to disease; and on the 5th Barnard, who, though
he failed to inspire confidence, had won the affectionate respect of all,
died of cholera. A few days later his successor. General Reed, who
had long been in poor health, resigned in favour of Wilson.
Some weeks earlier Lawrence had informed Edwardes that he
intended, if the army at Delhi should appear in danger of failing, to
send the British troops in the Peshawar valley to help them and invite
the amir of Afghanistan to occupy the valley on the understanding
that, if he proved faithful, it should be ceded in perpetuity. Edwardes
was amazed. The amir, he insisted, would regard the offer as signi-
fying the end of the British raj, and would follow the retreating troops
as an enemy. To cede Peshawar would involve the loss of the Panjab;
but all would be well if we maintained the capitals on the sea and the
frontiers, for "Between the two it is all a family quarrel, an insurrec-
tion in our own house". Finally he declared that rather than obey an
order to abandon Peshawar, he would feel bound by conscience to
resign and explain his reason to the government. Canning, to whom
Lawrence appealed, saw that to abandon territory would be fatal,
and decided, just before Wilson took command, in favour of Edwardes.^
Meanwhile fresh bands of sepoys had been streaming from all
quarters into Delhi. Their officers were unable to control them.
Hindus quarrelled with Muhammadans; both plundered the shops,
* Gf. Bosworth Smith, Life of Lord Lawrence, ii, 49 sqq. ; Cunningham, Earl Canningi
pp. 122-4.
CHI VI 13
194 THE MUTINY
debauched the wives and daughters of respectable citizens, and treated
the aged king with gross disrespect ; while all who had anything to lose
lamented the downfall of the British raj.^ It was the custom that each
successive band should go into action after its arrival; and fighting
on the Ridge was maintained without a pause. In six weeks there
were more than twenty combats. The British troops cheerfully en-
dured the discomfort of water-logged tents, kept up their spirits by
riding pony-races or playing cricket, and, though many of them treated
the camp-followers with a cruelty which Wilson could not wholly
check, fraternised cordially with their gallant comrades, the Gurkhas
and the Guides. Foot by foot they added to their ground until Sabzi-
Mandi was completely in their power; and by the end of July in-
variable defeat was weakening the confidence of the enemy. Still,
Delhi remained in their possession; and the Panjabis were losing
confidence in the British power.
Nicholson, who had taken command of the Movable Column,
almost immediately found it necessary to disarm two of the regiments.
On 8 July, hearing at Amritsar that an outbreak had occurred at
Jehlam, he disarmed a third; and two days later, learning that the
garrison of Sialkot had broken loose, he disarmed a body of his own
cavalry belonging to one of the mutinous corps. His remaining force
consisted of no more than one untried British regiment, a few Panjabis
and undisciplined police sowars, and nine guns ; but within the next
two days, after covering forty-four miles in a single march, he defeated
the Sialkot mutineers on the Ravi, near Gurdaspur. Four days later
he annihilated the survivors, who had sought refuge on an island in the
river, and on the 24th set out for Delhi. On the last day of the month
a body of sepoys who had murdered four of their officers at Lahore
was beaten on the Ravi by native police and villagers; and on the
following day Frederick Cooper, the deputy-commissioner of Amritsar,
who had captured the survivors, put them all to death, and thus
(Montgomery declared) saved the Lahore division.
Other dangers were not less successfully overcome. Edwardes
compelled the capitalists of Peshawar, who shrank from supporting
a government which they no longer trusted, to contribute four
hundred thousand rupees to the loan; disturbances on the border
were suppressed, partly by force, partly by tactful management; and
at Peshawar, where one of the disarmed regiments, stimulated by a
fanatic, seized the weapons belonging to newly raised irregulars, seven
hundred mutineers were either slain in pursuit or summarily executed.
Nevertheless, disbelief in the vitality of British power was begetting
disaffection in the Panjab, now denuded of so many troops.
About a fortnight after Nicholson arrived at Delhi it became known
that the siege-train was at last approaching. A strong body of sepoys
^ Cf, Metcalfe, Tu)0 Native Narratives of the Mutiny in Delhi; Press List of Mutiny Papers y
1857.
THE STORM OF DELHI 195
marched to intercept it; but Nicholson signally defeated them, and
on 4 September the train arrived. Wilson was ill and overwrought,
but, influenced by Baird Smith, who, though he was suffering intense
pain from a neglected wound, and was weakened by chronic dysentery,
had established an ascendancy over him, he consented to prepare for
the assault.^ The mutineers were still twice as numerous as their
opponents, and only the lack of a directing mind, who would have
concentrated on the decisive point forces that were wasting their
strength elsewhere, prevented the disparity from being overwhelming.
Within the next few days the engineers, protected by the fire of field-
guns on the Ridge, constructed four siege batteries opposite the
northern face of the city; and the gunners, working under a galling
fire of musketry (for the hostile guns were soon silenced), destroyed
the bastions and breached the curtain. On the 13th Wilson and Baird
Smith arranged the plan of operations. The first and second columns
were to storm the breaches, the third to penetrate the city through
the Kashmir gate, after it had been blown open, the fourth to expel
the enemy from the western suburbs and then to enter the city by the
Kabul gate, opened by their comrades from within. The command
of the operations was entrusted to Nicholson. The breaches, examined
under the starlit night, were reported practicable; and Wilson,
accepting the advice of Baird Smith, ordered the assault to be de-
livered at dawn.
About three o'clock the whole camp was astir. Sikhs, Pathans,
Gurkhas and Kashmiris stood side by side with Englishmen. The
mutineers had filled up the breaches in the night, and it was necessary
for the batteries to reopen; but at length the impatient troops were
permitted to advance. The first two columns under a fire of musketry
and an avalanche of loosened stones, by which many of the ladder-
men were killed, fought their way into the city; the third, followed
by the reserve, achieved its aim; but the fourth, disorganised and
disheartened by the disablement of their commander, failed, and
Hindu Rao's house, threatened by their emboldened opponents, was
with difficulty saved. Meanwhile Nicholson, seeing that the mutineers
in the city were regaining courage, attempted, despite the failure of
the fourth column, to assault the Lahore bastion, which the com-
mander of the second had neglected, in default of express orders, to
attack; but the cannonade which he encountered was so appalling
that his men shrank from the final rush, and while he was appealing
to them he fell mortally wounded. The result of the day's fighting, in
which about one-fourth of the attacking force had fallen, was that the
space between the north-eastern angle of the city and the Kabul gate
was in British hands. Wilson was so dissatisfied that he spoke of with-
drawing the troops altogether ; but Baird Smith and Neville Chamber-
lain induced him to hold on.
1 Gf. Vibart, Richard Baird Smithy pp. 49 sqq.y 121 sqq.
13-2
196 THE MUTINY
Next day many of the British soldiers, finding bottles of beer, wine
and spirits which the mutineers had purposely left in deserted shops and
on the pavements, became helplessly drunk; while of those who were
not exposed to or resisted this temptation many were enticed into dark
alleys and killed. Infuriated by this, their comrades, though they
treated women and children with forbearance, showed no mercy to
the men. By the 19th the city was completely mastered. The king
had been persuaded by a traitor to remain with his family at the tomb
of Humayun outside the city, where he was captured by Hodson, the
famous leader of light horse, who also shot the old man's sons after they
had surrendered. "This sad act was most uncalled for", wrote Hope
Grant, rejecting the plea of a possible rescue. ^
Though the recovery of Delhi, which, like the relief of Lucknow,
had been accomplished without reinforcements from England, ended
hopes of resuscitating the Moghul Empire, and in the Panjab restored
waning confidence in British power, it was too late to produce all the
results that had been expected. A column, dispatched from Delhi
through the Doab, burned villages, drove mutineers before it, and at
Agra defeated a force which had alarmed the garrison ; but the bands
which it had scattered returned after it passed and renewed their
depredations. In the spring of the next year the king of Delhi, found
guilty of rebellion and complicity in murder, was sentenced to im-
prisonment for life : but John Lawrence, pleading with Canning for
the citizens, many of whom had been tried and executed by a merciless
commission,^ insisted that the great mass were innocent; and the
territory of Delhi was placed under his control. It remained for the
veteran. Sir Colin Campbell, who had been appointed commander-
in-chief, to paralyse the surviving energies of the revolt.
His first aim was to relieve Lucknow. Havelock had been only just
in time to avoid encountering mutineers from Delhi, who reinforced
the besiegers, and to prevent their overwhelming the garrison. Within
two days after his arrival the troops that had not been able to join in
the final advance made their way into the entrenchment. Outram,
in order to accommodate the multitude under his command, seized
and occupied the palaces along the Gumti, and in frequent sorties
destroyed hostile batteries; but his force was not strong enough to
remove the non-combatants, for whom, moreover, he was unable to
procure carriage, and he found that there was enough food to last
several weeks. Lack of vegetables, however, produced scurvy, while
the soldiers had no tobacco, and the cold autumnal air penetrated
their summer clothing. Meantime Sir Colin was providing for the
equipment of his expected reinforcements, securing the road, which
was infested by rebels in Bihar, and, since the railway was open only
as far as Raniganj, arranging for transport thence to Allahabad. On
3 November he reached Cawnpore. Tantia Topi with the Gwalior
^ Holmes, op. cit. pp. 384-7. * Cf. Metcalfe, dp, ciL p. 72.
SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 197
contingent, which Sindhia could no longer restrain, was threatening
that city; but Sir Colin, rejecting the advice of Outram, who urged
him to secure its safety first, resolved to advance, and contented him-
self with leaving a detachment under General Windham to oppose
Tantia. On the 13th his force, numbering about five thousand men,
encamped at the Alambagh. The chief engineer advised him to adopt
the plan which Havelock had proposed — to cross the Gumti and
recross it near the residency. Though this route traversed open ground,
where the heavy guns could act and the enemy were not prepared,
he preferred the advice of Outram, who recommended him to cross
the canal near its junction with the river, and thence to follow the
route by which the main body had advanced in September. On the
1 6th the army crossed the canal. The enemy, deluded by a recon-
naissance which Sir Colin had made on his left, offered no opposition
till the advanced guard, moving in a narrow lane, was deluged by a
hail of bullets from the Sikandar Bagh on its right. For the moment
the situation seemed almost desperate: but by herculean efforts a
troop of horse artillery clambered up the bank on the side of the lane;
heavy guns were dragged through an opening which the sappers cut ;
and within an hour a breach appeared. The defenders, trapped
between the assailants and others who had forced an entrance through
a door, were gradually overpowered, and by sunset the survivors,
crowding into the towers at the angles of the building, were utterly
destroyed. Nearer the residency, the Shah Najif, a large mosque,
standing in a garden surrounded by a wall, withstood the heaviest
artillery, and Sir Colin had ordered the guns to be withdrawn when
a Highland regiment passed through a cleft which had fortunately
been discovered in the wall, and found that the garrison had fled.
Havelock had already captured buildings on the east of the residency:
next day the only remaining strongholds that barred the advance
were stormed ; and in the afternoon the relieving army joined the
garrison. Two days later. Sir Colin having secured his left flank, the
women and children, the sick and the wounded, were removed.
Outram and Havelock besought him to seize the Kaisar Bagh and
thus re-establish British supremacy; but, although the formidable
citadel was breached within three days, he refused to leave behind
the small force for which they asked, insisting that his entire army
would be needed to secure Cawnpore. The garrison therefore
evacuated the entrenchment; and two days later Havelock, weakened
by privation, succumbed to dysentery. On the 27th Sir Colin, leaving
Outram at the Alambagh to withstand the rebels until he should
himself return to crush them, marched with the convoy for Cawnpore.
The low tremulous sound which tells that artillery is at work at some
distant place was plainly heard.
Sir Colin had ordered Windham to occupy and strengthen the
entrenchment which Havelock had constructed, to send on to Luck-
1 98 THE MUTINY
now any British infantry that might join him, and, if Tantia should
threaten to attack him, to extend his force conspicuously in advance
of the entrenchment, but not to assume the offensive unless there
should be no other way of saving the position from bombardment.
Learning that Tantia was near, Windham obtained leave to retain
a portion of the expected reinforcements ; but within the next few
days various reports led him to fear that his chief had suffered a
reverse. Knowing that if he himself should be attacked, the defensive
display prescribed by Sir Colin would be of no avail, he had prepared
and forwarded for approval a plan for destroying two of the most
important posts which Tantia occupied ; but, owing to the interruption
of communication, he received no reply. Though he shrank from
executing this plan on his own responsibility, he attacked and defeated
a detachment which Tantia personally commanded, but immediately
retreated and selected a more defensible encamping-ground, west of
the town. Hearing that all had gone well at Lucknow, he hoped that
Tantia would not venture to attack him before Sir Colin returned.
Tantia, however, knew that Windham would not have followed up
a victory by retreat if he had not felt anxious ; his own force was
enormously superior; and in the next two days he twice defeated
Windham, who failed at the critical moment to support his best
officer, and was ill-served by another. Sir Colin, who received urgent
letters on his march, rode on, fearing that the bridge might have been
destroyed, in advance of the column, and at sunset saw the battle still
raging and flames rushing up above the city. But Windham had pre-
served two vital points : not only the bridge, but also the entrenchment
remained intact. Next morning Tantia opened fire upon the bridge;
but his artillery was overpowered, and Sir Colin's army, with the
convoy, safely crossed. For a week he remained on the defensive,
to allow the convoy to get out of danger ; but on 6 December he gained
a victory which would have been decisive if the chief of the staff had
not missed a chance of cutting off the retreat of two-thirds of Tantia's
army.
While Sir Colin, kept inactive by want of carriage, was awaiting
the return of the carts that had transported the convoy to Allahabad,
he thought out his plans for the rest of the campaign. Before he could
reconquer Rohilkhand and Oudh, it was necessary to get control of
the Doab. As three of the important points — Delhi, Agra and Alla-
habad— were already in his possession, it only remained to secure the
fourth, Fatehgarh, on the Ganges, east of Agra. This was accomplished
by converging columns, which drove numbers of rebels into Rohil-
khand, whereon many of the villagers supported the re-established
civil officers. Sir Colin desired to utilise the remaining months of cool
weather for the reconquest of Rohilkhand; for, knowing that the
subjugation of Oudh would require a longer time, he was unwilling
to expose his troops to the hardships of campaigning in the summer,
LUCKNOW RETAKEN tgg
and he believed that it would be safe to wait until the autumn if the
rebels were prevented from invading other provinces. But Canning
pointed out that military must give place to political reasons. To
restore order in Rohilkhand, which had long been under British rule,
was a matter of police: Oudh represented a deposed dynasty, and all
India was waiting to see whether the British could regain their
sovereignty. Sir Colin loyally obeyed. In order to maintain his hold
upon the Doab and to cover the march of reinforcements to Cawnpore,
where they were to concentrate before advancing against Lucknow,
he retained the position at Fatehgarh, and made an arrangement with
John Lawrence, in accordance with which a force was to hold
Rohilkhand in check until it should be time to reconquer it.
Ever since Sir Colin left Lucknow, Outram had defended the
Alambagh against a force which outnumbered his in the proportion
of thirty to one, thus nullifying the activity of a hundred and twenty
thousand rebels, preserving the safety of Cawnpore, and preparing
for Sir Colin's return. On 28 February, 1858, Sir Colin left Cawnpore,
where he had been superintending preparations for the siege of Luck-
now, and marched to Banthira, near the Alambagh, where the whole
army — the most powerful that a British general had ever commanded
in India — was assembled. A Gurkha force, under Jang Bahadur, the
virtual ruler of Nepal, and a column under General Franks, which
had conjointly enabled the civil authorities to resume their work in
the Benares and Allahabad divisions, were coming to take part in the
siege. Lucknow had been strengthened by the destruction of the
bridges over the canal and by three successive entrenchments which
protected the eastern side of the city, the innermost covering the
Kaisar Bagh. But the rebels had made one fatal blunder. As neither
Havelock nor Sir Colin had operated beyond the Gumti, they had
neglected the defence of the northern side. Sir Colin accordingly
adopted a plan devised by the chief engineer. Brigadier Robert
Napier. While he himself crossed the canal and, turning the enemy's
right flank, moved against the Kaisar Bagh along the Hazrat Ganj,
by which the Highlanders had advanced in September, Outram was
to cross the river and take the left flank in reverse. Aided by Outram's
enfilading fire. Sir Colin's force found the first line of works abandoned,
then, turning the others, sapped through the houses on the left of the
Hazrat Ganj, and finally captured the Kaisar Bagh, the Chattar
Manzil, and other palaces on its right; but three successive oppor-
tunities of cutting off large rebel bands were lost. Outram, who asked
leave to recross the river and attack the rebels while they were de-
moralised by the loss of the citadel, was forbidden to do so unless he
would promise not to lose a single man ; and in the next few days some
thirty thousand were allowed through mismanagement to escape.
When, on 2 1 March, the city was again in British hands, the province
remained in possession of the enemy.
200 THE MUTINY
Meanwhile Canning had committed an error which made re-
conquest still more difficult. Before the siege began he forwarded to
Outram a proclamation, to be addressed after the capture of the city
to the civil population, confiscating all lands except those held by a
few loyalists, offering immunity from disgrace to all who had not
murdered Europeans and who should instantly submit, but warning
them that for any additional boon they must trust to the mercy of the
government. Outram, reminding him that in the original settlement
the talukdars had been unjustly treated, declared that if nothing more
than their lives and freedom from imprisonment were offered, they
would be driven to wage a guerrilla war, whereas if the possession of
their lands were guaranteed to them, they would assist in restoring
order. The only concession which Canning could be induced to make
(though John Lawrence had pleaded for an amnesty to all mutineers
and rebels who had not committed murder) was to insert a clause
promising that those who would support the government immediately
might expect a large measure of indulgence. The promise was generally
disregarded, and the bolder spirits determined to resist to the last.
Before the recovery of Lucknow, Kunwar Singh, undaunted by the
defeat which he had suffered near Arrah, had taken advantage of the
withdrawal of troops, who were needed for the siege, to invade the
Benares division. Sir Colin sent a force to the rescue, and soon after-
wards the old Rajput died; but throughout the summer and the
autumn his followers maintained a guerrilla war in western Bihar.
The lack of the amnesty for which Lawrence pleaded was sorely felt.
"We must cling together", said a prisoner, "for when we go home we
are hunted down and hanged." Detached parties, when they could
be brought to action, were invariably defeated; but the rebels, as a
whole, were too swift to be caught. When they were confined by seven
converging columns within a narrow space, and success seemed
certain, one column was delayed, and the entire body escaped through
the gap. It was not until October, when the younger Havelock per-
suaded his chief to try the effect of mounted infantry, whom he had
himself hastily trained, that they were driven into the Kaimur hills,
where, before the end of the year, their organisation was destroyed.
To understand how Sir Colin was able to undertake securely the
reconquest of Rohilkhand and Oudh, it is necessary to trace the course
of events in the Bombay Presidency and the central provinces. Lord
Elphinstone, the governor of Bombay, equipped a column to support
the Central India Agency, and throughout the Mutiny regarded the
interests of his own charge as subordinate to those of the empire. The
Bombay army, on the whole, was tolerably staunch. In Bombay itself,
though the sepoys were in a mutinous temper, order was preserved
by the skilful management of the superintendent of police. A plot
was discovered in the recently annexed state, Satara, and the con-
spirators were punished. But the principal danger was in the southern
CENTRAL INDIA 201
Maratha country, where many landowners had been aggrieved by
the action of the Inam Commission, and the people were excited by
the momentary triumph of the Nana. A mutiny occurred at Kolha-
pur; intercepted letters revealed a Muhammadan conspiracy; and
emissaries from the Nana caused a local rebellion: but order was
restored by Colonel Le Grand Jacob, whom the governor had en-
trusted with discretionary power. ^
In Central India the most important point was Indore, the capital
of the Maratha prince, Holkar, who, in the absence of the agent.
Sir Robert Hamilton, was under the supervision of Colonel Durand.
The only British troops available were the gunners of a single battery
at the neighbouring station of Mhow; but on hearing of the outbreak
at Meerut, Durand summoned a detachment of Bhils and a force
belonging to the contingent that protected the begam of Bhopal,
while Holkar contributed a small force. Towards the end of June
Durand learned that the column which Elphinstone had equipped
could not advance, and on i July Holkar's troops, who were imme-
diately joined by the infantry of the Malwa and Bhopal contingents,
mutinied. The Bhils and the Bhopal cavalry did nothing, and Durand
was forced to retreat with the women and children under the escort
of the cavalry who, though not actively mutinous, refused to remain.
To reach Mhow was impossible, for the approach to the road was
commanded by the mutineers; and the cavalry insisted on going to
Sehore in Bhopal. The commandant at Mhow, however, supported
by Holkar, who, if he had before been half-hearted, now proved him-
self loyal, assumed the duties of the agent and restored order in his
own district, though in the surrounding country anarchy was rampant.
Durand himself, moving southward from Sehore, joined the column
dispatched by Elphinstone, which he thenceforth commanded, at
Asirgarh, and returned to Mhow, where he was kept inactive by stress
of weather. When the dry season began he marched northward,
quelled the insurrection in Malwa, and in December returned to
Indore, where, before transferring his charge to Hamilton, he insisted
that all who had been concerned in the mutiny should be punished. ^
Another Maratha, the widow of the raja of Jhansi whose dominions
Dalhousie had annexed, had already planned revenge. Within a
month of the outbreak at Meerut the garrison mutinied ; a general
massacre of Europeans followed ; and the rani, buying over the sepoys,
who had threatened to set up a rival, fortified her city, raised an army,
and prepared to defend her country to the last.^
In Bundelkhand, although many of the chiefs rebelled, Lieutenant
Osborne, the political officer at Rewah, conducted affairs so skilfully
that communication between Bombay and Calcutta remained un-
^ Gf. Jacob, Western India before and during the Mutinies, pp. 148 sqq.
2 Gf. H. M. Durand, Life of Sir Henry Durand, i, 197 sqq.
^ Holmes, op. cit. pp. 491 sqq, and references there cited.
202 THE MUTINY
broken. In the Sagor and Narbada territories, south of Bundel-
khand, disturbances were general, but farther south, in the recently
annexed province of Nagpur, the authorities sternly repressed the
first symptoms of disorder. In Hyderabad, where were congregated
numerous Muslim fanatics, the resident. Major Davidson, supported
by the Nizam's able minister, Salar Jang, kept the peace, despite active
propaganda; and a band of Rohillas, who attacked the residency, was
scattered by a shower of canister from the Madras Horse Artillery,
who, like all the troops of that presidency, were staunch.^ It was
reserved for Sir Hugh Rose to restore British supremacy in the heart
of the peninsula and to prepare the way for the final efforts of Sir Colin
Campbell.
In accordance with a plan formed by Sir Robert Hamilton, a
Bombay column, under Rose, was to march from Mhow by way of
Jhansi to Kalpi, while a Madras column, under General Whitlock,
marched northward across Bundelkhand. Leaving Mhow on
6 January, 1858, Rose joined his 2nd brigade at Sehore. Capturing
rebel forts and defeating all whom he encountered in the field while the
ist brigade on his left cleared the great road from Bombay, he was
within a day's march from Jhansi when he received a dispatch from
Sir Colin, ordering him to turn aside and succour a chief who was
besieged by the Gwalior contingent under Tantia Topi. Fortunately
Hamilton, who, as a political officer, ventured to use his own discre-
tion, directed him to disregard this order, and two days later the siege
of Jhansi began. Within the next four days the whole of the ist brigade
and the siege-train arrived. Even at night the besiegers lay on their
arms and by day were dazzled by the glare and half-stifled by the
scorching wind. The besieged never ceased firing except at night, and
even women were seen working in their batteries. The siege had lasted
nine days when Tantia appeared with twenty-two thousand men.
Without suspending the bombardment, Sir Hugh collected all the
men whom he could spare, and on the following day defeated him.
Two days later, after a desperate resistance, the city was taken by
assault, and on the following night the rani, quitting the fort, rode
with a few attendants for Kalpi. After halting for nearly three weeks
to collect supplies and ammunition. Sir Hugh, though the sick list
was daily lengthening, resumed his march, defeated Tantia again in
the battle of Kunch, and prepared to finish the campaign. Whitlock,
partly owing to his own inactivity, was too late to join him ; but Sir Colin
sent a force to his support. Half of his own troops were sick, all were
ailing, and he himself had suffered repeatedly from sunstroke; but on
22 May a final victory gave him possession of Kalpi. He was looking
forward to a period of rest which might enable him to recruit his
health when he heard of an event which caused a sensation throughout
India. The rani and Tantia, boldly marching with the remnant of
^ Holmes, op. cit. pp. 498 sqq. Cf. Meadows Taylor, op. cit. p. 382.
ROSE'S CAMPAIGN 203
their force to Gwalior, where Sindhia's army deserted to them, seized
the fortress and proclaimed the Nana as Peshwa. The main artery of
communication between Bombay and the North-Western Provinces
was in danger. Sir Hugh instantly took the field again, won a battle
on the outskirts of Gwalior, in which the rani, whom he esteemed as
"the best and bravest military leader of the rebels'*, fell, defeated
Tantia on the following day, and restored Sindhia to his throne.
Tantia with four thousand men fled into Rajputana, and during the
next eight months, crossing and recrossing the Chambal, the Nar-
bada, and other rivers, doubling again and again like a hunted
hare, but still hoping to find support for his master, he contrived,
thanks to the marvellous speed of his followers, to escape the many
columns that pursued him. Early in 1859 the fugitives who had not
dispersed surrendered, and a few weeks later Tantia, betrayed as he
wandered in the jungle by a feudatory of Sindhia, was taken in his
sleep. Condemned by a court-martial on the charge of rebellion, he
was hanged on 18 April at Sipri in the Gwalior state. ^
The campaign of Sir Hugh Rose had relieved Sir Colin Campbell
from anxiety for his rear. After the recapture of Lucknow he pro-
posed to undertake forthwith the reconquest of Oudh, which his own
remissness had made necessary; but Canning replied that the Hindus
of Rohilkhand, who were almost all friendly, might turn against the
government if it delayed to overthrow Khan Bahadur Khan. Three
columns, supported by that which had guarded Fatehgarh, converged
on Bareilly, and by the end of May, although the moulvi of Faizabad,
who had led the assailants of Outram at the Alambagh, gave con-
siderable trouble, Rohilkhand was completely subdued. In Oudh,
where the peasant cultivators, hardly noticing the movements of the
rebels, were busy in the fields, the mutineers, the troops of the deposed
king, the talukdars' clansmen, and the Muhammadan zealots formed
distinct groups. A force which had been detached by Sir Colin did
what was possible, and many talukdars, trusting to the assurances of
Montgomery, who had succeeded Outram, that their land should not
be confiscated, tendered their submission; but the number that re-
mained in arms was still considerable. In October, when the weather
became cool, and the sepoys had mostly dispersed. Sir Colin began
his campaign. Success was less swift than it might have been if he had
followed the advice of Outram, who, pointing to the example of the
younger Havelock, urged him to form a corps of mounted infantry;
but the cordon with which he surrounded the province was of over-
whelming strength, and by the end of December the rebels had been
driven into Nepal. Still, in many parts of the peninsula small columns
were employed in hunting down marauders ; and it was not until the
end of 1859 that India was restored to something like its normal state.
It remains to consider certain questions relating to the Mutiny, the
1 Cf. Holmes, op. cit. pp. 503 sqq. and references there cited.
204 THE MUTINY
isolated rebellions connected with it, and the disturbances to which it
gave rise among the civil population. Before the story of the greased
cartridges was circulated, there was no definite plot for a general
rising of the Bengal army, and it is improbable that such a plot wais
formed even after the first mutinies. For, though Cracroft Wilson,
the judge of Moradabad, collected evidence which convinced him
that 31 May had been fixed for a simultaneous revolt, and that the
plan was marred by the premature outbreak at Meerut, John Lawrence
found in the numerous intercepted letters written by sepoys not the
faintest hint of an organised conspiracy, while none of the faithful
sepoys, none of the condemned mutineers who might have saved their
lives by disclosing it, if it had existed, knew anything about it. In
reply to questions put to prisoners in the North-Western Provinces,
the cartridge, and it alone, was named as a grievance.
While the mutineers lacked a head, many were half-hearted and
fought reluctantly against the leaders whom they had been accus-
tomed to obey ; and between the various groups there was a want of
concert. Sikhs, Panjabis, Gurkhas fought whole-heartedly against
them. Even so, however, the prospects of the British would have been
almost desperate if Indian princes — particularly the rajas of Patiala,
Jhind and Nabha — had not given invaluable aid. Colin Campbell
made serious mistakes and lost precious opportunities ; but his critics,
who contrasted him with the men who, without help from England,
had repelled the first onslaught of the mutineers, and complained
that with forces enormously superior he was slow in extinguishing the
revolt, forgot that his task, in itself even harder than theirs, was
rendered still more difficult by the delay in offering an amnesty and
by the confiscation proclaimed by Lord Canning.
Although many whose pride was offended by the domination of an
alien and infidel race, or who had personal objects to gain, desired
the overthrow of the British raj, diversities of race, rank, status, aim
and, above all, religion made it impossible for them to combine.
Aggrieved chiefs, such as Kunwar Singh, dispossessed land-holders,
villagers who objected to taxation, hereditary thieves, budmashes of
every kind took advantage of the prostration of authority to redress
their grievances, to rob, or to gratify private animosities; but civil
disturbances, except in a few isolated regions and on the part of a few
embittered or fanatical groups, never amounted to rebellion. After
the Mutiny broke out, the titular king of Delhi was proclaimed head
of a movement by which Muhammadan zealots hoped to regain
supremacy; but this probably deterred many to whom Muhammadan
rule was abhorrent from supporting the mutineers. The Nana, pro-
fiting by the military rising which he had helped to encourage,
became the representative of those Marathas who desired to restore
the power once exercised by the Peshwa. Among the states which
Dalhousie had annexed rebellion broke out in Jhansi and Oudh
DALHOUSIE'S ALLEGED RESPONSIBILITY 205
alone ; and in Oudh it was due not to annexation, but to the harshness
with which the talukdars were treated, to the failure of Havelock's
earlier attempts to relieve the residency, to the abandonment of
Lucknow, justifiable though it may have been, by Sir Colin Campbell,
to the errors which he committed during the siege, and to Canning's
impolitic proclamation. These rebellions arose in consequence of the
Mutiny, and there is no evidence that any of the rebels, except the
Nana, conspired before it began.
Dalhousie, except in so far as he had failed to remedy the indisci-
pline of the army, which was rather the business of the commander-
in-chief than of the governor-general, and had neglected to safeguard
Delhi and Allahabad, was unjustly blamed, and has been fully
vindicated. Even the annexation of Jhansi would have been harmless
if it had been supported by armed force ; the increase of European
troops, for which he had in vain pleaded, would have at least averted
the worst calamities of the Mutiny; while by the construction of roads
and telegraphs, and by the administration which he bestowed upon
the Panjab, he contributed much to the power by which the Mutiny
was quelled.
Even before the reconquest of Oudh an event had occurred which,
while it marked the restoration of British supremacy, inaugurated a
new period of Indian history. The East India Company, upon which
all political parties in England agreed in throwing the blame of the
Mutiny, was abolished; and India was to be ruled in the name of the
queen. A proclamation, prepared under her direction, announced
that the government of India had been assumed by the queen; that
Lord Canning was to be the first viceroy, and that all officers who had
been in the service of the Company were confirmed in their offices ;
that all treaties made by the Company with Indian princes were to
be maintained; that the queen desired no extension of territory,
promised full religious toleration to her Indian subjects, and would
always respect their ancient usages; that she offered pardon to all
rebels and mutineers who had not directly taken part in the murder of
Europeans ; and that she would constantly endeavour to promote the
prosperity of her Indian dominions.
CHAPTER XI
THE HOME GOVERNMENT, 1858-1918
X HE government of India is an amazingly complex and dual form of adminis-
tration. It has two chiefs, the secretary of state here, the man at the desk and on
the front bench in this country; and the viceroy, the man on the spot in India. It
is the latter who, at any rate in India, is invested with paramount power; but the
final responsibility rests with the secretary of state. ^
In his British Government in India Lord Curzon further observes :
This dualism has arisen not merely fcom the simultaneous existence of one half
of the government in England, and the other half in India, for that is a feature of
the administration from a sovereign centre of all dependencies or dominions, but
from the subdivision of that authority both in England and in India.^
The subject of this chapter is the history of the London branch of
British administration in India from 1 858, the memorable year which
was marked by the end of the Mutiny and the proclamation of Lord
Canning as first viceroy and governor-general for the crown, to 19 18,
the year which saw the conclusion of the great war.
In February, 1 858, a weighty and dignified petition^ was presented
to both houses of parliament on behalf of the East India Company.
It failed to avert the impending sentence, but certainly influenced
subsequent legislation.
The petitioners assumed that the minister of the crown who would
henceforward conduct the home portion of the administration of
India would be assisted by a council composed of statesmen ex-
perienced in Indian affairs. The knowledge necessary for governing
a foreign country, and in particular a country like India, could not
possibly be possessed by anyone who had not devoted a considerable
portion of his life to the acquisition of it. The council should be
qualified not only to advise the minister, "but also by its advice
to exercise a certain degree of moral check". The minister would
generally be unacquainted with India and would constantly be ex-
posed to solicitations from individuals and bodies
either entirely ignorant of that country or knowing enough of it to impose on those
who knew still less than themselves and having very frequently objects in view
other than the good government of India.
British public opinion was necessarily unacquainted with Indian
affairs and therefore liable to be misled. The responsible minister's
council should, therefore, derive sufficient weight from its constitution
* Lord Curzon, Hansard, 13 July, 191 7, xxv, 1027-8.
* II, 67.
* Hansard, 1858, cxLvm, Appendix.
THE COMPANY'S PETITION 207
to be a substantial barrier against inroads of self-interest and ignorance
in England from which parliament could hardly be expected to afford
a sufficient protection. The council must be so constituted as to be
personally independent of the minister, and should feel itself responsible
for recording an opinion on any Indian subject and pressing that
opinion on the minister whether it was agreeable to him or not. The
minister when overruling his council must be bound to record his
views. Thus the council would be a check and not a screen. Otherwise
it would merely serve to weaken the minister's responsibility and "to
give the colourable sanction of prudence and experience to measures
in the framing of which these qualities have had no share".
A council composed of crown nominees would not preserve the
independence of judgment which had marked the court of directors.
If a substantial portion of the old spirit was to remain, a majority at
least of the council which w^ould assist the new minister for India
should hold their seats independently of his appointment. That body
should not be smaller in numbers than the existing court of eighteen
directors. The petitioners went on to plead for the continuance of
the existing system, to urge that the present home government of India
was not really a double government, as the final word always rested
with the cabinet, and that a new arrangement which in any way
checked the minister's discretion would be liable to a similar reproach.
This reproach, however, originated
in an entire misconception of the functions devolving on the home government of
India, and in the appHcation to it of the principles applicable to purely executive
departments.
The executive government of India was and must be situated in India
itself. The court of directors was not so much an executive as a
deliberative body. Its principal function and that of the home govern-
ment generally was not to direct the details of administration, but to
scrutinise and revise the past acts of the Indian government; to lay
down principles and issue general instructions for their future guidance
and to give or refuse sanction to great political measures which were
referred home for approval. Such functions admitted of and required
the concurrence of more judgments than one. They were more
analogous to the functions of parliament than to those of an executive
board; and it was considered an excellence in parliament to be not
merely a double but a triple government. The petitioners ended by
praying that no change should be made in the constitution of the
Indian government until the conclusion of "the present unhappy
disturbances or without a full previous enquiry into the operations of
the present system".
But both the great political parties in parliament were resolved
that there should be no delay in completing the process which had
definitely begun in 1853. It was an obvious anachronism that a
2o8 THE HOME GOVERNMENT, 1858-1918
chartered company should take part in administering a great empire.
. It was wrong that there should be a Company's army and a royal
army, an Indian and a royal navy. In India itself the prestige of the
Company had lately suffered irretrievable damage.^ Immediately
after the presentation of the Company's petition, Lord Palmerston,
then prime minister, introduced his bill for transferring the govern-
ment of India entirely to the crown. ^ But when the bill had been read
a second time he was turned out of office on the Conspiracy to Murder
Bill, and was succeeded by Lord Defby. Then Disraeli, who came in
as Derby's chancellor of the exchequer, introduced a new bill which
provided the Indian minister with a council composed partly of
crown nominees and partly of persons to be elected by two con-
stituencies, one consisting of men who had served in India or possessed
financial interests in that country, the other made up from the parlia-
mentary electors of the leading commercial cities of the United
Kingdom, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Belfast.
These proposals, for which Lord Ellenborough, then president of the
Board of Control, was largely responsible, were received with general
ridicule^ and were dropped. Ellenborough's dispatch to Canning
regarding the Oudh proclamation caused his own resignation. His
successor. Lord Stanley, piloted certain resolutions through the House
of Commons which formed the basis for a measure destined to regulate
the government of India from London for sixty-two years.* Its main
provisions were:
[a) The place of the Board of Control and court of directors would
/be taken by a secretary of state in council. The new secretary would
be assisted by a "Council of India" consisting of fifteen members, of
/ whom eight were to be appointed by the crown and seven were to be
S^ elected by the directors of the East India Company. The majority of
both appointed and elected members were to be persons who had
served or resided in India for ten years at least, and had not left the
country more than ten years before their appointment. Future
appointments or elections were to be so regulated that nine at least
of the members of council should hold these qualifications. Future
vacancies in crown appointments would be filled by crown nominees ;
vacancies among the seven members elected by the directors would be
filled by persons co-opted by the council. No member could sit or
vote in parliament. All would hold office during good behaviour and
could be removed only on petition by both houses of parliament.
{h) The council would conduct Indian business transacted in the
United Kingdom and would correspond with the Government of
India, but would not possess the initiative which had all along rested
with the court of directors. It could give its opinion only on questions
^ Martineau, Lift of Frere, i, 230.
« Hansard, 1857-8, gxlviii, 1276.
' Ideniy GXLix, 1675; cf. also 1677.
* Monypenny and Buckle, Life of Disraeli, iv, 138, 164-5.
THE INDIA ACT OF 1858 209
referred to it by the secretary of state, who would preside over meetings
with power to overrule should he be unable to obtain agreement. In
such an event he might require that his opinion and the reasons for it
should be entered in the minutes of the proceedings, and any member
who had been present at the meeting could exercise the same privilege.
. {c) The secretary of state might constitute committees of his council
for the more convenient transaction of business, and might distribute
departments of business among those committees. He would direct
the manner in which all business should be conducted. The council
would meet once at least every seven days and could do no business
without a quorum of five.
{d) Communications from the secretary of state to the governor-
general, and orders proposed to be made in the United Kingdom by
the secretary of state, must, subject to certain provisions, be either
submitted to a meeting of the council or be deposited in the council-
room for seven days before issue. Any member of council might record
his opinion on any such communication or order in a minute-book
kept for the purpose, and a copy of such entry would be sent forthwith
to the secretary of state. If a majority minuted against a communica-
tion or order, the secretary of state must, if adhering to such com-
munication or order, record his reasons.
{e) Orders of the secretary of state relating to expenditure and
loans required the concurrence of a majority of the Council of India.
The revenues of India, which would be charged with a dividend on
the Company's stock and with their debts, could only be used for the
purposes of the government of India. Clause 41 of the act provided
that no grant or appropriation of any part of such revenues or of any
property coming into the possession of the secretary of state in council
should be made without the concurrence of a majority of votes at a
meeting of the council. All powers of issuing securities for money in
the United Kingdom vested in the secretary of state in council must
be exercised by the former with concurrence of a majority of votes at
a council meeting.
(/) The salary of the secretary of state and the cost of his office
would be charged to the revenues of India. A statement of "moral
and material progress " would be annually submitted to parliament. '
The secretary of state would every year lay Indian accounts before
parliament, on occasions which became famous as "budget debates ",
although in fact they were simply reviews of Indian affairs.
(g) It was provided that urgent communications or orders which
did not, under the terms of the act, require the concurrence of a
majority of council votes, might issue on the authority of the secretary
of state alone without reference to the council. But in such cases the
secretary would record the reason for urgency and give notice thereof
to the members of the council.
(h) Orders concerning the levying of war or the making of peace.
210 THE HOME GOVERNMENT, 1858-1918
or the treating or negotiating with any prince or state, which virtually
gave effect to cabinet decisions and did not require the support of a
majority of council votes, might be marked as "secret" and sent off
on the authority of the secretary alone without any notice or reference
to the council. "Secret" dispatches from the governor-general in
council or the governors of Madras or Bombay relating to such
matters need not be communicated to the Council of India.
j (t) Appointment to the offices of governor-general and governors
/of presidencies vested in the crown. The governor-general would
V appoint lieutenant-governors to provinces subject to the approval of
Her Majesty. Members of the various councils in India would be
appointed by the secretary of state in council.
{j) The naval and military forces of the Company were transferred
, to the crown, their separate local character being retained. It was
/ directed by clause 55 that except for the purpose of preventing or
j repelling invasion, or under other sudden or urgent necessity, Indian
revenues should not be applicable for military operations outside
India without the consent of parliament.
The basic principles of the bill were fully discussed in parliament. ^
The object was to vest full charge of the government of India in the
! crown *'in order that the direct superintendence of the whole empire
might be placed under one executive authority". The new secretary
1; of state would be a member of the cabinet. His individual responsi-
» bility was essential. His decision would be final on all matters. But
he should not be allowed to choose all his councillors, for the council
should possess considerable independence. ^ It must exercise "moral
control".^ As Sir Henry Maine subsequently observed, the ultimate
power of the secretary of state was regarded with apprehension by
certain speakers in the House of Commons. On 23 June the directors
drew up a letter criticising the bill and stating that in their opinion
the council should have more than a consultative voice in all questions
regarding expenditure. In such cases the secretary of state should not
be able to exercise his overruling power. Precautionary provisions
were then engrafted on the bill and appeared as clauses 41 and 55.*
The semi-independent status accorded to the Council of India by
the cabinet was approved by Mr Gladstone for the opposition.^ In
order "to clothe this new body with all the moral weight and influence
that was consistent with retaining intact the responsibility of the
secretary of state", he recommended that its first members should be
named in the bill. Each nomination would thus receive the express
approval of parliament. This would give the council a start which
would secure for it a good character hereafter. It needed all possible
weight at this time of transition from one form of government to
^ Hansard, 1858, cxldc, cl. ' Ideniy gl, 2066. * Idem, cli, 323.
* Unpublished memorandum, dated 8 November, 1880.
• Hansard, cli, 470, 757-8.
THE DEBATES OF 1858 211
another and there were precedents for such procedure. The proposal
was rejected by the cabinet, mainly on the ground that, if accepted, it
would deprive the court of directors of the power of electing any
members of the new body. The government wished to avoid needless
changes. It had found in the court of directors a council in being
which consisted partly of crown nominees and partly of persons elected
by the Company's court of proprietors. It would practically con-
tinue this council, increasing the number of nominees and reducing
the number of elected members so as nearly to equalise the two
varieties.^
Both the cabinet and parliament desired to deal tenderly with the
Company which had fallen before "the inevitable consequences of
time, change and progress",^ and to set up a substantial barrier
against inroads of unbalanced sentiment and attempts to debit the
revenues of India with unfair charges. India must not be brought
into the cockpit of party politics. The members of the Council of India
must be "neither the masters nor the puppets but the valuable
advisers of the new minister".^
While, however, the council would be invested with an appreciable
degree of independence and would be so large as to represent the
various presidencies and public services in India, it would have no
powers of initiative, and would, in the main, confine its attention to
such questions of policy and matters of first-class interest as were laid
before it by its president, who in "secret" affairs could act by himself
entirely apart from his councillors.* He was a member of the cabinet
which could not be forced to take into its confidence any given
number of persons whom it did not wish of its own accord to con-
sult. The president of the Board of Control had always possessed
the privilege of communicating with the governor-general through
the secret committee of the court of directors in regard to "secret'*
business.^
Secret orders, however, concerning the levying of war and other
matters might involve considerable expenditure from Indian revenues.
It was somewhat difficult to see how members of council could in such
cases discharge their statutory responsibilities.
While it was hoped that all these arrangements would conduce to
the better government of India, the cabinet was convinced that, in
Lord Derby's words, "the government of India must be, on the whole,
carried out in India itself".® Interference should be on as small a
scale as possible; although, apart from the large amount of Indian
business which was necessarily transacted in England, since parlia-
ment was responsible to the nation for the administration of India, it
must discharge its responsibilities conscientiously.
^ Hansard, cli, 759-60. 2 idem, cxlix, 820.
^ Idem, CLI, 1454-5. . * Idem, cli, 1457-8.
^ Lee-Warner, Dalhousie, 1, 107-8. * Hansard, cli, 1448.
14-2
/
212 THE HOME GOVERNMENT, 1858-19 18
The Act "for the better government of India" (21 &22 Vict. c. 106)
received the royal assent on 2 August, 1858; and a month later the
directors issued their last instructions to their servants in the East and
in memorable words commended their splendid trust to the care of
the sovereign of Great Britain.
Let Her Majesty appreciate the gift — let her take the vast country and the
teeming millions of India under Her direct control; but let Her not forget the great
corporation from which she has received them nor the lessons to be learnt from its
success.
Lord Stanley, afterwards Earl of Derby, who, as president of the
Board of Control, had piloted the bill of 1858 through the House of
Commons, was the first secretary of state for India. With the board's
two secretaries, he migrated to a new India Office which took the
place of the Company's East India House. ^ The secretaries became
the first Parliamentary and Permanent Under-Secretaries of State for
India. Resigning in 1859 with the Conservative cabinet, Stanley was
succeeded by Sir Charles .Wood, who, as president of the Board of
Control, had been responsible for the Charter Act of 1853 and the
education dispatch of 1 854, and now held office till 1 866 with excellent
results. He was a single-minded man,^ of great knowledge, patience
and judgment, and was largely responsible for the success with which
Indian affairs were conducted during a very difficult period of transi-
tion and reconstruction. The arrangements for the councils of the
governor-general and those of the governors of Madras and Bombay,
the setting up of new High Courts of Judicature, the reorganisation
of finances, the codification of the law, railway extension, the amal-
gamation of the queen's and the Company's British regiments, the
determination of the number of British troops to be quartered in India,
the adjustment of numerous confficting interests, all demanded careful
consideration in London. The council was a very strong one, including
ex-directors and men who had earned distinction in the Mutiny
period. Although there were necessarily differences of opinion and
outlook from time to time, although the transaction of business by
committees sometimes caused irritating delays, although time was
sometimes wasted over triffing financial questions which could better
have been decided in India,^ some years after quitting office Wood,
who had meantime become 'Lord Halifax, told the House of Lords
that any secretary of state who firmly and honestly discharged his
duties would never experience the slightest difficulty with his council.*
On a subsequent occasion he
deprecated any measure which could diminish the independence and self-respect
of the council, for a strong council was needed to give the secretary of state the
support requisite for resisting party pressure, a pressure not always applied in a
manner beneficial to India.^
1 Foster, East India House, pp. 153-4. * ^^- Hansard, cxLvm, 1298.
* Martineau, op. cit. i, 447. * Hansard, cxcv, 1085. ' Ideniy cxcvi, 693.
THE LEGISLATION OF 1869 213
In 1 866, however, a more brilliant and impulsive, but less patient and
experienced, secretary of state presided at the council-board. Lord
Salisbury (then Lord Granborne), while in office, avoided an open
breach with his council. But afterwards, when speaking in the House
of Lords as Marquis of Salisbury on 1 1 March, 1 869, on " the Governor-
general of India Bill", he expressed his belief that the "tutelage" in
which the secretary of state for India was held by his council was
injurious to the good government of that country. In such matters
as railway guarantees and other commercial affairs the council's
"veto" was a protection, but, with that exception, responsibility
should lie with the secretary of state alone. Opportunity should be
taken of another bill then pending to clear up "the mystery" which
enabled the council, under cover of vetoing money questions, to inter-
fere in every other measure on the plea that it involved money con-
siderations and thus to become "an incubus on the minister ".^
On this occasion Lord Salisbury was followed by his successor in
office, the Duke of Argyll, who assured him that there was no mystery.
The true interpretation of the law was that the secretary of state was
"absolutely supreme" in financial, as in other matters, and could
overrule his council whenever he thought fit to do so. The duke was
aware of no case in which the council had set up its authority in
opposition to the will of the secretary of state. On 1 9 April, in bringing
forward the "Government of India Act Amendment Bill", he ex-
plained to the House the history of clause 41 in the act of 1858 which
had given rise to Lord Salisbury's contention. Considerable discussion
followed, and extended over 29 April, when the bill was read a second
time, to 13 May, when Lord Salisbury moved and withdrew an
amendment. The subject revived in a debate in the House of Com-
mons on 17 August, 1880, when it was raised by Fawcett, the econo-
mist, afterwards postmaster-gen eral.^ The view eventually taken was
that the true intentions of parliament in enacting clause 41 of the act
of 1858 were to impose constitutional restraint on the powers of the
secretary of state with respect to the expenditure of money, but by no
means to extend the effective assertion of this restraint to all cases,
especially where imperial questions were concerned. The secretary of
state was a member of the cabinet and in cabinet questions the views
of the cabinet must prevail. It was never intended that the council
should be able to resist the cabinet by stopping supplies. Vis-d-vis the
secretary of state, as representing the latter, the Council of India
possessed no veto. As Sir Henry Maine expressed it, "any such
power given to the council and exercised by it would produce before
long a combination of both the great English parties to sweep away
the council itself".^
In the course of the debate in the House of Lords on 13 May, 1869,
^ Hansard, cxciv, 1074. 2 jjem, gclv, 1452.
. ' Unpublished memorandum.
214 THE HOME GOVERNMENT, 1858-1918
the Duke of Argyll stated^ that Lord Salisbury had been moved to
raise the question by the opposition which his council had offered to
a project put forward by certain commercial bodies to which the
secretary of state had agreed. The council had been supported by the
Government of India, but had eventually given way. In any case,
clause 41 of the act of 1858 survived Lord Salisbury's assault.
The "Government of India Act Amendment Bill", which pro-
duced the Lords debate of 13 May, 1869, contained proposals for
altering the life-tenure of members of the Council of India to one of
ten years, which might, for reasons of public advantage, be extended
to fifteen years. The secretary of state justified his recommendation by
the rapid changes which were taking place in India, largely as a result
of extending railway communications, and by the need of not only
intimate but recent Indian experience on his council.^ His views
were accepted by the House. Lord Salisbury moved an amendment
to the bill proposing that in future all members of the council should
be appointed by the crown. None should be co-opted by the council
itself. The amendment was carried and embodied in the bill, together
with a provision transferring from the secretary of state in council
to the crown the right of filling vacancies on the councils of the
governor-general and governors in India . The general effect of the
legislation and debates of 1869 was to strengthen the position of the
secretary of state vis-d-vis his council. His position vis-d-vis the Govern-
ment of India was fortified by the completion in 1870 of a direct
telegraph line between India and England by submarine cable through
the Red Sea. He could thus less than ever he confronted with accom-
plished facts.
For years after 1 869 the history of the Council of India was un-
eventful. When Lord Salisbury again presided over the India Office
(1874-7) his Afghan and North-West Frontier policy, especially the
occupation of Quetta and the separation of the trans-Indus districts
from the Panjab, was strongly opposed by members of his council who
followed Lord Lawrence's lead.^ But a secretary of state who could
rely on cabinet support could now certainly get his way. Although,
according to Lord Salisbury's biographer, he was a believer "in the
virtue of a single inspiration and in the evil of hampering it by the
intrusion of competing ideas", he was exercised by the problem of
combining an independence of initiative in the government of India
with his own responsibility for final decision, and considered that
it could be solved only by private correspondence between himself
and the viceroy.* He carried this doctrine to lengths to which Lord
Northbrook refused to follow him.
Lord Northbrook recognised the subordinate position of the viceroy but held
that parliament had conferred certain rights, not only on the viceroy, but on his
^ Hansard, cxcvi, 700.
2 Idem, cxcv, 1077-8. Gf. Martineau, op. cit. i, 356-7.
■ Lady Gwendolen Gccil, Life of Lord Salisbury, 11, 159. * Idem, pp. 65-6.
POLICY OF THE INDIA OFFICE 215
council, which differentiated the latter in a very notable degree from subordinate
officials. ^
Lord Cromer has stated that Lord Salisbury was disposed to reject,
and, he thought, to underrate, the value of the views of Anglo-Indian
officials.
This does not appear to have been the practice of some of his
successors. Lord George Hamilton, who first as under-secretary and
afterwards as secretary of state introduced thirteen Indian budgets in
the House of Commons, writes that the Council of India was really a
cabinet with the important exception that its procedure and powers
were prescribed by an act of parliament. It had absolute control over
Indian expenditure. It preserved an unbroken record of the reasons
for expenditure of all kinds and performed the business of checking
far more effectively than the treasury, obtaining better results from
the expenditure sanctioned. ^ Lord Randolph Churchill found the
council "an invaluable instrument".^
As regards the general policy of the India Office in the latter years
of the nineteenth century, although relations between India and
England had become more intimate, involving a constantly increasing
degree of interference, and though the cases in which final orders
could be passed in India had become less frequent, yet the secretary
of state did not constantly interfere in the ordinary work of Indian
administration, but mainly confined his action to answering references
from the Indian government. Apart from great political or financial
questions, the number or nature of these references depended on the
character of the governor-general for the time being. The secretary
of state initiated almost nothing. In domestic affairs the Indian
government was almost independent so long as it was content to
carry on without largely increasing the cost of existing establishments
or incurring new and heavy charges. The secretary of state had no
disposition to interfere needlessly in the details of administration in
India, but was sometimes subjected to pressure which could with
difficulty be resisted. On such occasions the council was extremely
useful. It further assisted in preserving continuity of administrative
principles in India where the official personnel was necessarily always
changing.*
The views of the majority of the Council of India on the subject of
divided control of the India army provoked the impatience of Lord
Ripon who, at the close of the first year of his viceroyalty, complained
of the increasing interference of the India Office which he ascribed to
the "subordinates ", and the fact that Lord Hartington, then secretary,
was overworked with other than Indian business. But had the same
^ Mallet, Life of Northbrook, p. 91.
^ Parliamentary Reminiscences and Reflections (i 874-1 880), pp. 307-8.
' Winston Churchill, Life of U)rd Randolph Churchill, i, 475.
* Strachey, Indiay pp. 74-81 (191 1 ed.).
2i6 THE HOME GOVERNMENT, 1858-1918
viceroy received the warning drawn up by Sir Henry Maine, the most
prominent member of the then existent Council of India, relating to
the projected Ilbert bill, he might have been saved from a course of
action which he lived to regret bitterly. The council had in 1883
desired Lord Hartington, then secretary of state, to transmit Maine's
"secret" memorandum to the viceroy; but this was not done, and
they were subsequently consoled by Lord Kimberley, Hartington's
successor, with the just reminder that they should formally have
conveyed the warning themselves.^
Meantime the constitution of the council was slightly altered. In
1876 the secretary of state was allowed to appoint not more than three
special experts (legal or financial) on the old tenure of good behaviour.
In 1889 he was allowed to abstain from filling vacancies until the
number of members should be reduced to ten. Reduction was asked
for in the interest of economy. In the previous year the council had
been joined by one of its most distinguished members, Sir Alfred
Lyall, described by Lord George Hamilton as his "right-hand
adviser", who held office for fifteen years and has left us some passing
impressions of its proceedings. Fresh from governing great provinces
he wrote:
The India Office is comfortable and convenient, but rather depressing: in the
first place, death visits the council rather frequently : secondly, we have all rather
the look of old hulks laid up in dock, and are men who have said good-bye to active
service; thirdly, the distance and difference between London and India makes one
feel as if looking at things through a glass darkly, and not face to face, and in a year
or two I shall begin to distrust my own judgment. ... In council we stand up and
orate, which breaks down desultory discussion, but is no good for thrashing out
questions.*
Again, he says "one can prevent some mischief but do little good on
the council". A year later, however, he liked his work, found that it
gave him enough to do and even more than he cared for. In 1894,
with all his colleagues, he protested vainly and vigorously against the
exclusion of cotton goods from the general import duty of 5 per cent.,
as a serious concession to British interests which would damage Indian
confidence in the British Government.
Neither parliament nor the secretary of state was inclined to inter-
fere with the administration of India as long as all went well and
Indian affairs hardly touched British politics. Between 1880 and 1905
so little did parliament seriously concern itself with Indian domestic
business that in 1889 and 1891 the secretary of state was able to dis-
regard resolutions of the House of Commons relating to the opium
trade,^ and in 1894, after consulting the Government of India, he
declined to take action on another resolution of the same House in
favour of simultaneous examinations in England and India for ad-
* Wolf, Life of Ripon, ir, 137-9. ^ Durand, Life of Lyall, p. 322.
■ Debates of 3 May, 1889, and 10 April, 1891, Hansard, cccxxxv, cgclii.
MORLEY AND HIS COUNCIL 217
mission to the civil service.^ The general feeling in this country was
that Indian affairs were safe in the hands of the Indian government;
and as late as 1904 Lord Curzon, after his first term of office, struck
no jarring note when he asked that his government might not be
bothered with "an excessive display of parliamentary affection" and
declared that the ideal party in England for people in India was the
party which would act "both as the impartial umpire as well as the
superior authority in the disputes that sometimes arise between us,
and that will not unduly favour the home country at our expense".
A year later, however, the viceroy resigned in consequence of a
difference with the Home Government and secretary of state, the bitter-
ness of which is recalled by some of his last words. ^ The quarrel came
as a climax to various disagreements, and at one time Lord Curzon,
with evident injustice, ascribed to the members of the Council of
India "a desire to thwart and hinder his work".^ After his departure
a new era began. The partition of Bengal produced a violent agita-
tion ; a revolutionary movement gradually emerged into view ; a
scheme of wide constitutional reform was projected; and in 1907!
John Morley, then secretary of state, desiring to add two Indian
gentlemen to his council, introduced and carried through parliament
a bill which empowered him to increase the strength of that body
from twelve to fourteen. No member would be appointed who had
been absent from India for more than five years; and no member
would hold office for more than seven years. Salaries of members
were reduced from £1200 to ;^iooo.
General J. H. Morgan says that no more autocratic secretary for
India ever reigned at Whitehall,* none ever consulted his council less,
and none ever admonished a viceroy more. It must be remembered
that Morley was subjected to considerable pressure from the left wing
of his own party. But there is ample evidence to support General
Morgan's views, both in a letter from Lord Minto to Lord Stamford-
ham dated 5 July, 1910,^ and in Morley's own Recollections. Yet it is
evident that at one time Morley was anxious not to depress but to
elevate the position of the Council of India. In August, 1907, he
invited Lord Cromer to join^ it and Cromer consented. Then the
secretary of state discovered that the act of 1858 forbade the appoint-
ment of anyone "capable of sitting and voting in parliament". He
wrote to Minto on 23 August, 1907, that he would propose to the
cabinet that the law should be altered, for Cromer would "give to my
council a strength and authority in the public eye, of which, if we are
in for troublesome times, we shall stand in much need". The project,
however, unfortunately fell through ; and Morley was left with coun-
cillors, none of whom individually carried weight in parliament.
^ Pp. 368-70, infra. ^ British Government in India, ii, 255.
' Ronaldshay, Curzon, 11, 237. * John Viscount Morley, an appreciation, p. 32.
^ Buchan, Memoir of Lord Minto, p. 311. * Morley, Recollections, 11, 233.
2i8 THE HOME GOVERNMENT, 1858-1918
Regarding some of these as reactionary, he opened his doors wide to
irresponsible advisers;^ and finding no particular difficulty in getting
his own way, absorbed in the fascination of his task, gathered more
and more power into his own hands, much to the vexation of a long-
suffering viceroy.^
The close of the Morley regime found the late Mr E. S. Montagu,
as parliamentary under-secretary, enquiring into the conduct of
business at the India Office. The Marquess of Crewe, its new head,
introduced proposals for reform which appear to have largely
emanated from Montagu, and were rejected by the Lords after an
illuminating debate.
On 3 1 July, 1 9 1 3, in answer to a question put by Viscount Midleton,
Lord Crewe announced his intention of introducing proposals for
legislation which would facilitate and quicken India Office procedure
by making the transaction of council business by committees excep-
tional and no longer usual. ^ Members of council would now be
attached to particular departments. They would be reduced to eight
or ten, the two Indian members being retained, and would become
whole- time servants, their salaries being raised once more to jf 1200.
They must possess recent experience, and, if qualified by official
service, would sit on the council in the concluding years of their active
service and not in the first years of their retirement. The secretary of
state emphasised the value of the council, which assisted him by
enabling matters to come up for decision in a more compact and
concentrated way than they did in other offices. He derived marked
advantage in case of a difference of opinion and a discussion on a
particular subject in council, from being obliged to present that sub-
ject in a more accurate form than he probably would do if he had
only to argue the pros and cons of it with himself Moreover, and
this was by no means the least important point, the council greatly
strengthened the position of the secretary of state in dealing with the
government of India, especially if he were a new-comer to office.
If the existence be conceived of a viceroy backed by a body of local experts of
long practical experience, then, I think, the secretary of state would need to be a
Bismarck to hold his own in any controversy against so powerful a combination as
that, and the only result, as I think, would be that India might be brought more
often than it is into the cockpit of parliamentary politics.
The council's financial powers were such that in theory it might make
the government of India under our parliamentary system almost
impossible; theoretical possibilities, however, need not alarm practical
men who were anxious to agree if they could. A proof of this was that
in matters not financial "in which the secretaiy of state could overrule
his council", such a step had been taken only "on the very rarest
occasions". In 1914 Lord Crewe introduced a "Council of India"
* Cf. Hansard, cxcv, 1083. * See Buchan, op. a/, p. 312. ' Hansard, xiv, 1574-86.
LORD CREWE'S PROPOSALS 219
bill based on these views and including two novel proposals : (a) for
imposing statutory obligation to appoint two persons domiciled in
India to the council, selected from a list drawn up by the non-official
members of the imperial and provincial legislative councils in British
India; (b) for amplifying the list of "secret" matters with which,
under the act of 1858, the secretary of state could deal exclusively.
The bill was rejected by a large majority of the Lords. It was
strongly condemned by Lord Gurzon as designed to withdraw from
the council's cognisance an enormous number of questions covering
the whole sphere of Indian government and to reduce that body,
which by its passive acquiescence in the removal of the capital from
Calcutta to Delhi had already shown itself flexible and pliant, to "an
impotent and costly sham".^ In proposing to compel the secretary
of state to choose two Indian politicians as his councillors, it was for-
gotten that the council was a body of experts, not one of politicians
or public speakers.
Lord Curzon's reference to the Delhi policy takes us back to certain
incidents of the year 1 9 1 1 which formed an extraordinary episode in
the constitutional history of British India. ^
In 1876 Disraeli's government introduced a Royal Titles bill which
was intended to mark the new relation which, since 1 858, the sovereign
had occupied towards her subjects in India. The bill passed through
parliament by a very large majority; and in Mr Buckle's words:
The world understood that a new pledge had been given of the determination
of the British crown to cherish India ; and her princes and peoples understood that
their sovereign had assumed towards them a nearer and more personal relation.^
At a great durbar held at Delhi on i January, 1877, Queen Victoria
was proclaimed "Queen-Empress of India". On i January, 1903,
at a second Delhi durbar her successor was proclaimed "King-
Emperor". On 12 December, 191 1, there was a third Delhi durbar,
distinguished beyond its predecessors by the presence of the sovereigns
themselves and by the remarkable announcements which were made,
on the advice of his ministers, by the king-emperor. Up to that time
all changes of signal importance in the government of India had taken
place after full discussion in parliament and under parliamentary
sanction. Now, however, changes of great moment were proclaimed
of which parliament had no previous cognisance. At the durbar His
Majesty announced that the capital of India would henceforward be
Delhi and not Calcutta ; the partition of Bengal, which had caused
such bitter controversy, would be revoked; Bengal would be one
province under a governor in council ; a new province of Bihar and
Orissa would be created; Assam would once more be the charge of
a chief commissioner. These measures, which necessarily involved
heavy expenditure and far-reaching consequences, naturally pro-
^ Hansard, xvi, 484. 2 Gurzon, op. cit. 11, 1 19.
3 Life of Disraeli y iv, 93, 167; v, 471.
220 THE HOME GOVERNMENT, 1858-1918
voked the criticism that the cabinet had "used the authority of the
sovereign to settle in their own way an issue of an acutely controversial
character".^ They originated with the governor-general in council,
found favour with the secretary of state and the Asquith cabinet, and
were therefore accepted by the Council of India, who can hardly have
obtained an opportunity to give even a passing thought to the large
issues and heavy expenditure involved. Approval was transmitted to
the governor-general ; and parliament only became aware of all that
was contemplated after His Majesty had made the announcement.
Lord Crewe argued inter alia that in fact the action taken was ad-
ministrative and did not require parliamentary sanction. The original
partition of Bengal had been carried out without reference to parlia-
ment. But in fact these later changes were of far greater moment even
than that ill-starred measure.
In the third year of the last war, the Council of India and the India
Office came prominently before the nation. The management and
conduct of the campaign in Mesopotamia had been originally en-
trusted to the government and military authorities in India. The
commission of enquiry which was appointed, after the capture of
Kut-el-Amara by the Turks, and sat in London, commented un-
favourably on the India Office organisation and on the substitution of
private telegrams from the secretary of state to the viceroy for public
telegrams which would have passed through or been communicated
to the Council of India. The practice had so much developed of recent
years as to make the private telegrams "almost the regular channel of
official inter-communication ".2 There were strong and obvious ob-
jections to this procedure. The private telegrams, moreover, did not
always remain in the office, for Lord Morley had taken his away.
Neither the Council of India nor the governor-general's council had
been kept in touch with the varying fortunes of the Mesopotamian
expedition, the control of which had been
narrowed down to two high officials, both heavily charged with many other anxious
and pressing duties, and both permanently stationed in localities which had little,
if any, private or personal touch with the forces campaigning in Mesopotamia.*
The conclusions of the commission were debated in both houses
of parliament and led to the resignation of the secretary of state,
Mr Austen Chamberlain, who had succeeded late to a situation created
by others. His predecessor, Lord Crewe, contended in the House of
Lords that the policy of the expedition all through was a matter for
the cabinet and the cabinet alone.* His own private telegrams of
importance relating to this matter had been made official and were
preserved at the India Office.
Lord Islington, under-secretary of state, admitted that private
telegrams had been excessively employed.^ In future they would be
* Lord Curzon, ap. Hansard, xi, 142. * Report of Mesopotamia Commission, p. 102.
* Idem, p. 103. * Hansard, xxv, 929. * Idem, 952.
THE MESOPOTAMIA DEBATES 221
fewer and wherever possible would be made "official" after dispatch.
The India Office was not established or equipped for the conduct of
an extended campaign outside India. ^
Lord Curzon said that without the machinery of private letters and
telegrams the government of India, an "amazingly complex and dual
form of administration" which had two chiefs, could not go on. Still
these communications should not be employed to such an extent as to
leave the Council of India at home in ignorance of what was being
done. The secretary of state and the viceroy must not become "a kind
of concealed duumvirate". They would gain by acting with, and not
without, their councils. In the Commons Montagu, who was then
out of office, had attacked the government of India as too wooden,
inelastic and antediluvian for modern purposes. The British democracy
had never enjoyed an opportunity of trying to rule India. Even if the
House of Commons were to give orders to the secretary of state, that
minister could be overruled by a majority of his council in vital
matters. He knew of one case in which
it was a very near thing, where the action of council might without remedy have
involved the government of India in a policy out of harmony with the declared
policy of the House of Commons and the cabinet.
The whole system of the India Office was designed to prevent control
by the House of Commons, for fear that there might be too advanced
a secretary of state. The statutory organisation of the office produced
an apotheosis of circumlocution. The whole system of governing India
must be explored in the light of the Mesopotamian Commission
Report.^
Mr Chamberlain explained that both Lord Crewe and himself had
acted in relation to the Mesopotamian campaign as spokesmen of His
Majesty's government. Supreme control had been exercised by the
secretary of state on behalf of and by direction of the cabinet. The
India Office was not organised to conduct military operations and never
attempted to do so. It would therefore have been better if from the
first the control exercised on behalf of His Majesty's government had
been vested in the General Staff or Army Council. All the private
telegrams on which the commission had commented related to the
levying of war, and might, under the act of 1858, have been marked
"secret" instead of private, and then the commission's criticisms in
this connection would have gone by the board. Nothing but injury
could come to national, imperial and Indian interests by mixing up
a debate on a military breakdown, or alleged military mismanage-
ment, with the question of the whole future fabric of Indian govern-
ment. His Majesty's government were already considering a dispatch
from the Government of India on reforms in the political system of
that country.
^ Hansard, xxv, 956, 1027-8. 2 /^^^^^ ^cv, 2199-210.
222 THE HOME GOVERNMENT, 1858-1918
Immediately after the Mesopotamia debates Mr Austen Chamber-
lain resigned and was succeeded by Mr Montagu. The declaration of
20 August, 191 7, shortly followed, and late in the same year, at the
invitation of the viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, the secretary of state
arrived in India. After preHminary conferences at Delhi, he toured
to Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, accompanied by the viceroy, the
home member of the governor-general's council and two members of
the Council of India, one British and one Indian. On the conclusion
of the tour, further consultations were held; and it was not until about
the end of April, 1918, that Mr Montagu returned to England. The
purpose of his visit had been to determine on the spot, and in con-
sultation with the viceroy, what steps should be taken in the direction
of establishing in India government responsible to the Indian peoples.
The joint report of Mr Montagu and Lord Chelmsford, published in
July, 191 8, was framed after prolonged discussion with the council of
the governor-general and met with unanimous support from the
Council of India as "on the whole recommending the measures best
adapted to ensure safe and steady progress in the desired direction".
It formed the basis of the act of December, 191 9, which materially
changed the constitution under which India had been governed since
the end of the Mutiny.
We have noticed the parting advice of the directors of the East India
Company and the main principles which underlay the legislation of
1858. It was parliament which deliberately organised the system de-
nounced by Mr Montagu in 191 7. It was parliament which, desiring
to accord all possible independence to the Council of India, arranged
for that body to contain first an elected and then a co-opted element.
When the legislation of 1 869 had invested the secretary of state with
power to appoint all his councillors and with certain other powers of
appointment, the council declined in importance, but for long main-
tained a strong position as an advisory and, in some measure, a con-
trolling body. Under the Morley regime a further decline set in, which
apparently accelerated rather rapidly.
While defending his proposals to the House of Lords in 1914,
Lord Crewe asked consideration for "the perpetual and in some
respects ever-increasing control of parliament, the ever-increasing
force of public opinion in India, and the power of the press in England
and India". With regard to the influence of parliamentary control on
the working of the India Office, Lord George Hamilton remarks :
The moment a crisis occurs, then the department affected which, for the time
being, is working at the very highest tension, is bombarded with questions, inter-
pellations, and demands for returns, which not infrequently absorb many hours of
attention from the very officials who are best qualified to deal with the emergent
subject.^
But in pre-war days crises were infrequent, and Lord Crewe's plea
^ Parliamentary Reminiscences and Reflections (1886-1906), p. 259.
INDIA IN PARLIAMENT 223
for changes which cut at the root of the basic principle of the act of
1858 is hardly reconcilable with the testimony of the Montagu-
Chelmsford Report that parliamentary interest in India was neither
well-informed nor well-sustained.
Parliament, according to Mr Montagu and Lord Chelmsford,
should have devised a substitute for the prolonged inquests which
preceded periodical renewals of the Company's charter. Its omission
to do this was largely responsible "for our failure, in the face of a
growing nationalist feeling in India, to think out and work at a policy
of continuous advance".^ Was this omission then a grave mistake?
The parliamentary inquests of pre-Mutiny days did much good.
They belonged to times which were more leisurely than our own,
when the East India Company and its servants were well represented
in parliament, and some front-rank statesmen carefully studied Indian
affairs. Several speeches, for instance, delivered in the House of
Commons on the East India Company bill of 1853 are remarkable for
their intrinsic value as well as for the position of the speakers in public
esteem. It is instructive to compare the debates on that measure with
the debates on the Government of India bill of 191 9. In 1853 the bill,
which had been prepared after long enquiries by committees of both
houses, was brought in on 9 June after three nights of discussion
distinguished by remarkable speeches by Wood,^ then president of
the Board of Control, by John Bright and by Sir James Hogg, chair-
man of the court of directors. The second reading lasted four nights.^
Among the speakers were Macaulay, Cobden, Bright, Disraeli and
Lord John Russell. The bill was afterwards before a committee of the
whole house for eight nights, and was read a third time and passed
on 2 9 July. * The Government of India Bill of 1 9 1 9, on the other hand,
was presented to the House of Commons on 29 May, was read a
second time on 5 June^ and was on that day sent to a joint committee
of both houses on which the lower house was represented by seven
members. The bill was recommitted on 3 December, 1919, considered
by the Commons on that day and the next, and was read a third time
on the 5th.^ The president of the Board of Education was the only
member of the cabinet beside the secretary of state who made any
contribution to the debates. The leaders of the Independent Liberal
and Labour parties made brief speeches. There was little inclination
to examine in detail the weighty recommendations of the joint com-
mittee. The debates were meagre.
Between 1858 and 1914 two processes were accelerating. In
England, domestic, Irish and foreign affairs were making more and
more insistent demands on the time and thoughts of members of
parliament; in India administration was becoming more elaborate
^ Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms.
2 Hansard, cxxvii, 1093, 1095, 1195, 1230, 1277, 1299, 1352-
' Idem, cxxviii, cxxix. * Idem, cxxix, 1009-45.
^ Idem, cxvi, 2295-411. * Idem, cxxii, 429-538, 649-790.
224 THE HOME GOVERNMENT, 1858-1918
and complex. There was no longer a court of directors with re-
presentatives and friends in the House of Commons. Secretaries of
state for India were increasingly left by preoccupied cabinets and
over- busy parliaments to shape their own policy. They gradually
emancipated themselves from their council and became more absolute
until, shortly after the close of our period, a secretary of state^ ven-
tured on a remarkable departure in policy without cabinet sanction
and was compelled to resign office. It is certain that none of his pre-
decessors desired that periodical parliamentary inquests of the old
kind should be renewed. The idea was considered and abandoned by
Lord Morley,^ who was fully aware that whereas those enquiries were
held in an atmosphere altogether remote from India, in widely
different times, and were therefore unproductive of any racial excite-
ment in that country, conditions so favourable to searching and fruit-
ful investigation had gone for ever. Perchance, too, he had read these
weighty words of Sir Henry Maine :
It would not be thought a very safe or happy constitutional rule for any civilized
European country that all its political, judicial, administrative and even social
institutions (for these last in India cannot be wholly separated from the others)
should be thrown into the crucible every twenty years. But if this experiment is
to be tried, why of all countries should it be tried on India?
Maine argued that in view of the intense conservatism of the Indian
masses, of their singular liability to agitation and panic, they were
unlikely to be favourably impressed by the knowledge
that everything connected with the system under which they lived was to be brought
into question and that everybody was to be heard against it. Such enquiries were
formerly comparatively innocuous because in fact the people of India knew little
about them. But India had now been brought close to our shores by the electric
telegraph and the canal, and there are many agencies, unknown even in 1853,
which spread through the people more or less distorted representations of what is
doing in England.^
He went on to suggest that the remedy for parliamentary ignorance
of Indian affairs might be the constitution of a joint committee of both
houses, which would be brought into contact with Indian finance and
would create gradually a class of members familiar with Indian
questions.
Such a joint committee now sits. But if the parliaments of the period
of 1 858-1 91 8 failed, for obvious reasons, to study Indian affairs with
much care or thoroughness, they kept their eyes firmly fixed on some
essential principles of policy. They trusted their agents and treated
their servants with fairness and consideration. They dealt in a
generous and non-party spirit with such proposals for constitutional
reform as were put before them by responsible ministers. In financial
questions they desired to treat India with ample fairness. There is no
more striking instance of this than the attitude of parliament in regard
* The late Mr E. S. Montagu. ' Morley, Indian Speeches, pp. 22, 50.
* Minute by Sir H. Maine, 8 November, 1880.
THE CROWN AND INDIA 225
to the apportionment of the cost of employing Indian troops outside
India on occasions when the interests of the people of that country did
not appear to be directly affected.^ Even in the financial year 191 3-14
the contribution of India toward the upkeep of the imperial navy,
from which she was soon to benefit so feelingly, was only £1 64,000. ^
This considerate spirit met with a just and welcome reward when on
the outbreak of the great war a resolution was moved by a private
member on the viceroy's legislative council and carried unanimously,
stating that India would "desire in the present emergency that she
should be allowed not only to send her troops but to contribute the
cost of their maintenance and pay".^
It is certain that no measure ever passed by parliament has better
fulfilled its purpose than the Royal Titles Act. Lytton Strachey
remarks of our English polity that it was in the main a common-sense
structure; but there was always a corner in it where common sense
could not enter, where, somehow or other, the ordinary measurements
were not applicable and the ordinary rules did not apply. "So our
ancestors had laid it down, giving scope, in their wisdom, to that
mystical element which, as it seems, can never quite be eradicated
from the affairs of men." It is certain that like our own mind, and to
a far greater extent, the Indian mind craves for "an unexplored
inexplicable corner" in a polity. And if there is something which
awakens a feeling of the bonds which unite mankind in the thought
of the connection between the Indian people and ourselves, it is
certain that without a symbol of unity which will appeal to both alike,
that feeling would rapidly dwindle. The crown worn by Queen
Victoria and her successors has been far more than a mere symbol of
unity. It has been a strong power* and a reconciler in India.
* Cf. Hansard, 1882, cclxxiii, 255-307. ^ idem, 1914, lx, 347. ^ Idem, lxvi, 956.
* Gf. Maconochie, Life of an Indian Civil Servant, p. 125; Lawrence, The India We Served,
239-41.
15
CHAPTER XII
THE INDIAN GOVERNMENTS
The Central and the Provincial Governments
IN India, 1858-1918
J. H E chief of the government in India, the man on the spot there,
was first styled "viceroy and governor-general" in the famous pro-
clamation of 1858. The title of viceroy was not conferred on the
governor-general by any parliamentary statute although it is used in
the warrants of precedence and in the statutes of the knightly orders.
Where the governor-general is regarded as the representative of the
sovereign he is spoken of as viceroy ; where he is referred to as the
statutory head of the Government of India he retains his original
title. 1
The superintendence, direction and control of the civil and military
administration were still vested in the governor-general in council,
who was now required by the Government of India Act of 1 858
(21 & 22 Vic. c. 108) to pay due attention to such orders as he might
receive from the secretary of state. One of the most arduous tasks
before Lord Canning and his council was the preparation of pro-
posals for reshaping the central government and the governments of
Madras and Bombay. New machinery for legislation had also to be
considered.
The New Executive Councils
The changes to be made in the executive councils, and more par-
ticularly in his own council, had for some time engaged Canning's
anxious thought. He corresponded first with Stanley and then with
Wood on the subject, and, although the letters exchanged were
private and confidential, their drift can be clearly gathered from
minutes preserved in the India Office and from Canning's corre-
spondence with Lord Granville. ^ He was evidently dissatisfied with
the Bengal civil servants who had been his original councillors ; and
it was only when James Wilson arrived from home as financial mem-
ber, and Bartle Frere joined the council from Bombay, that his ideas
gradually changed. He was still more dissatisfied with the system of
collective business which he found in operation. The council was
working as a board and deciding all questions by a majority vote, the
governor-general possessing an overruling power in matters of grave
importance. Canning wrote to Stanley that, as he was personally
* Gurzon, British Government in India, ii, 49; Strachey, India, p. 50.
' Fitzmaurice, Life ofCranvilU, vol. i, chaps, vii, xiv.
PROPOSED ABOLITION OF COUNCILS 227
responsible for everything, he would manage better if he were relieved
from the necessity of discussing questions with a council. Let the
government of India be vested solely in the viceroy and let him be
able to appoint secretaries to assist him. He would consult the secre-
tary of the department concerned as to particular business, and should
there be a conflict of opinions, he would admit other secretaries to the
discussion. To such an arrangement there were two objections — first
the impossibility of leaving a glorified secretary to carry on the
supreme government in Calcutta when the governor-general left the
Bengal Presidency, and second the difficulty of providing for the
conduct of relations with the legislative council and for the manage-
ment of that council. He made suggestions for overcoming these
obstacles.
Stanley was inchned to agree in principle and laid the matter before
a committee of his council, which, on 23 May, 1859, decided by a
considerable majority that the executive councils at Calcutta, Bombay
and Madras, should all be remodelled on this basis. The "officers of
the departmental secretariats" would be the responsible advisers or
councillors of the governor-general and of local governors. But
methods for carrying this idea into effect had still to be considered.
On 18 June, 1859, Stanley gave place to Wood, who appointed a fresh
committee to deal further with the matter. A majority of this com-
mittee held that the main principle had been accepted. The govern-
ment of India should be vested by law in the governor-general alone.
He should be assisted by as many secretaries as might be thought
necessary. The pay of each secretary would be 65,000 rupees per
annum.
Secretaries would be nominated by the governor-general, subject .
to confirmation in office by the secretary of state. The governor- n
general would be able to consult any or all of his secretaries as he ' ^
pleased, but would take decisions himself.
These resolutions, however, provoked strong memoranda from
H. T. Prinsep, the protagonist of the Orientalists in 1835, who was
now one of the dissentients. He pointed out that in fact Canning's
proposals went far towards "unmitigated bureaucratic despotism",
and that "for the sake of independence" the advisers of the governor-
general or governor ought always to be selected by superior authority.
He urged other considerations. The confidential reports of the two
committees were sent out to India and were strongly criticised there,
notably by Frere, who minuted on 29 December, i860, that what the
governor-general had always wanted was not fewer and less re-
sponsible but more and more responsible advisers, always preserving
the power to act entirely on his own view without hindrance from
their dissent. There should be a proper division of labour, each coun-
cillor having his own department to which he could devote his con-
tinuous attention instead of all consulting or pretending to consult
15-2
228 THE INDIAN GOVERNMENTS
on every matter, gieat or small, as used to be the theory and pretended /
practice. Canning had already effected an improvement in pro-y/
cedure.
In a letter to Wood of 15 May, i860, Frere had already urged that
the proposals of the two Council of India committees would, if adopted,
both add to the governor-general's work and seriously diminish his
ability to do it. They would also tend to draw more power to England,
rendering it impossible for the governor-general to take any important
step without the approval of a majority of the council of the secretary
of state, a most undesirable denouement as India was changing even
faster than England and the Indian experience of even ten years ago
was misleading. He did not speak of the experience of such statesmen
as Mountstuart Elphinstone, whose wisdom was never obsolete.
Frere showed his letters to Canning; and combined with actual /
experience of intervention from the India Office his arguments went /
far to change the viceroy's mind.^ Canning had introduced the port- /
folio system of doing business into his council. The ordinary work of 1
departments was now distributed among the members and only the
more important cases were referred to the governor-general or dealt
with collectively. Moreover the reform of th,e legislative council was
now bulking largely before his eyes. In a letter to Wood of 4 February,
1 86 1, he abandoned the proposal that secretaries should take the
places of councillors. The main point would now be that each coun-
cillor should be identified with a department and should be able to
deal witii something more than technicahties. Boxes would no longer
go round carrying papers which could be disposed of without circu-
lation. *'We have", he wrote, "reformed ourselves a good deal, but
I should like to see the new status of members recognised by Act of
Parliament." The dispatch was going by that mail. The proposals
were in "as quiet a form as possible". The reform of the legislative
I council was "now far more pressing than that of the Executive
j Council".
Wood had originally contemplated a bill for each of these reforms
but instead on 6 June, 1861, introduced one which dealt with both.
The Mutiny, he said, had aggravated the difficulties of administration.
In fact it would be folly to shut our eyes to the increasing difficulties
of our position in India, and for this reason we should put all our
institutions there on the soundest possible foundation. In the Lords
Earl De Grey and Ripon,^ under-secretary of state, explained that
the policy was "to limit the changes as much as possible and to make
those only which experience showed to be necessary".
The Councils Act of 186 1 (24 & 25 Vic. c. 74) established a governor-
ll general's executive council of five ordinary members. In 1853 the
* See Canning to Frere, 24 October, i860, Life of Frerey i, 358.
2 Afterwards secretary of state for India, 1866; viceroy of India, 1880-4. Hansard,
9 July, i86i,p. 586.
THE COUNCILS ACT OF 1861 229
legal member had been permitted to sit and vote at all council
meetings. He had become a fourth ordinary member. But the dis-
organisation of public finances caused by the Mutiny had led to the
appointment of a trained financier as fourth member. A jurist,
however, was also needed, as the law was in process of codification,
and even the Penal Code, which had originally been drafted by
Macaulay, was still incomplete, so a fifth member was added to the
council. Of the five members three must have served the crown or
the Company in India for not less than ten years. One of these was
a military member, always a distinguished soldier; the other two were
civil servants who up to the year 1859 had always been selected from
the Bengal Presidency. The fourth member was a financial expert,
who might or might not have served the crown or the Company
previously; and the fifth or legal member was a barrister of England
or Ireland, or a member of the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland of at
least five years' standing. The commander-in-chief might be, and in
practice always was, an extraordinary member who divided with the
military member the responsibility for the military administration of
the country. He was the executive head of the army and was charged
with its organisation and preparation for war as well as with questions
of promotion. His office was known as army headquarters and was
distinct from the military department of the government which, ,.
presided over by the military member, concerned itself with the I
control of supply and transport, with ordnance, remounts, clothing,
medical stores, military works and military finance, and above all
with the preparation of the military budget. Proposals for military
reform or expenditure went from army headquarters to the military
department of the Government of India where they were noted on,
and, if involving expenditure, further proceeded to the finance depart-
ment. Finally they reached the viceroy through the military member
of council. If the viceroy, the military member and the commander-
in-chief were in general agreement, the proposals were carried out.
But if there were disagreement a proposal was either referred back
for further consideration or was laid before the governor-general in
council, debated on, and accepted or rejected by a majority of votes.
Every ordinary member of the governor-general's council, assisted
by a secretary, under-secretaries and a sufficient office establishment,
presided over certain departments of the central government. The
governor-general himself held charge of the foreign department which
conducted the correspondence of India with neighbouring powers ;
he kept the London cabinet informed on questions of Asiatic policy ,
connected with India, and supervised the affairs of the native states. ^
The British representatives at the courts of ruling princes were the
agents of the governor-general and not the representatives of the
Government of India.
The distribution of departments among ordinary members of
230 THE INDIAN GOVERNMENTS
council was a matter of custom, not of law. The act of 1861 conferred
on the governor-general the power to make rules and orders for the
more convenient transaction of business in his council other than the
business at legislative meetings, and provided that every order made
and every act done in accordance with such rules and orders must be
treated as being the order or act of the governor-general in council . ^
Canning's reforms in the conduct of business were thus sanctioned by
statute and the portfolio system was firmly established. Councillors
were able to dispose of unimportant cases belonging to their depart-
ments in the name of the Government of India. Cases in which two
departments differed, or a member proposed to overrule a local
government, or important issues were involved, were laid before the
viceroy together with the views of the members in charge and of their
secretaries. Differences of opinion between a member and the viceroy
were referred to a full council, where decision was taken in accordance
with the views of the majority. If opinions were equally divided the
president had a casting vote. But if a measure were proposed which
seemed to the governor-general to affect essentially the safety, tran-
quillity or interests of "the British possessions in India", he could
overrule the majority of his council. In such cases any two members
of the dissentient majority might require the transmission to the
secretary of state of the decision taken together with their minutes of
dissent. This overruling power of the governor-general's, which came
down from the acts of 1786 and 1793, was reaffirmed and slightly
expanded by an act of 1870. But however widely the views of a
\dceroy might originally differ from those of a majority of his coun-
cillors, there was almost invariably a compelling desire for compro-
mise. ^
If the governor-general in council declared it to be expedient that
he should visit any part of India unaccompanied by his council, he
could in council appoint a member to preside at meetings held in his
absence, with all the powers of the governor-general except those
relating to legislation.^ Should the governor-general be absent from
a council meeting through indisposition, the senior ordinary member
presided.
Thus the Government of India became a cabinet government pre-
sided over by a governor-general, business being carried on depart-
mentally and the governor-general taking a more active and particular
share in it than is taken by a prime minister in a Western country or
than had been taken by any of his predecessors. The system remained
unaltered during our period. But a sixth ordinary member was
provided, by act of parliament, in 1874, to preside over the depart-
^ Ilbert, Digest, sec. 42 (2), p. 103.
* See, for instance, Wolf, Life of Lord Ripon, 11, 50. Lord Curzon wrongly adds the aban-
donment of Kandahar to the instances in which a viceroy overruled his council {op. cit.
", 73)-
• Ilbert, Government of India, pp. 187-8, clauses 45-6.
THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL IN COUNCIL 231
ment of public works. In 1904, on the recommendation of the
secretary of state, the power of appointing a member to this particular
department was converted into a general power, and the public works
member was replaced by a member for commerce and industry.
The next change in the personnel of the council came after warm
discussion and led to the resignation of Lord Curzon in 1905. The
commander-in-chief, Lord Kitchener, had advocated the abolition of
the military member and the replacement of the military department
of the Government of India by an army department presided over by
the commander-in-chief This proposal was strongly resisted by the
viceroy and the ordinary members of his council on the ground that,
if adopted, it would concentrate military authority in the hands of
the commander-in-chief and would subvert the supremacy of the civil
power by depriving it of independent military advice. Lord Kitchener,
however, maintained his views, urging that proposals from the
commander-in-chief should not reach the Government of India
through any second military adviser, who must necessarily be his
junior in rank and his inferior in experience. Eventually Lord
Kitchener's contention was in substance accepted and was followed./
by Lord Curzon's resignation. The commander-in-chief became the ^
viceroy's sole adviser on all military questions. For a short period
there was a military supply member of inferior status to the former
military member; but this arrangement, as Lord Morley said,
** proved good neither for administration nor economy". It ceased
in 1909, and the vacancy at the council-board was filled in 1910 by
a newly appointed member in charge of education and sanitation.
For the closing years of our period and throughout the great war the
council consisted of
{a) the commander-in-chief (extraordinary),
[b) the home member,
/ [c) the financial member,
' [d] the legal member,
{e) the commerce and industry member,
(/) the education member,
all holding office for five years.
In the year 1909, on the recommendation of the viceroy and the
secretary of state, a distinguished Hindu barrister, Mr (afterwards
Lord) Sinha, was appointed legal member by the crown. He was
succeeded by a Muhammadan barrister; and when the latter had
completed his term of office, a Hindu high court judge was appointed
education member of the central executive.
The viceroy and governor-general, although invested with para-
mount power in India, was the governor-general in council and,
unlike the secretary of state, possessed a very limited power of separate
action. Rarely, however, did viceroys wish to dispense with the
assistance of their colleagues. John Lawrence was much vexed by
232 THE INDIAN GOVERNMENTS
opposition from certain councillors; but he came to the viceroyalty
a tired man/ had long been accustomed to govern alone in the
Panjab, and was worried by the atmosphere of rapid evolution and
frequent argument which he found in Calcutta. There is much truth
in a sentence of Frere's on 20 March, 1868:
no Governor-General since the time of Olive has had such power and opportunities ;
but he fancies the want of progress is owing to some opposing power which only
exists in his own imagination.^
Lord Minto complained on 3 July, 19 10, that he had
constantly felt that he must depend upon himself alone with the exception of one
or two advisers he had managed to secure and that the councillors sent him by
Lord Morley were not only useless but mischievous.
But Minto evidently wrote under the influence of intense irritation
with a secretary of state who "arrogated to himself complete in-
dependence" in making appointments to the council and would give
little or no weight to the governor-generaFs objections.^ As a general
rule, viceroys and their councillors were drawn together, not only by
identity of aim but by force of circumstances, by the logic of the
palpable facts which encompassed all alike. Unity was generally
achieved, for without it lay no salvation. Thus we see one of the
strongest of viceroys. Lord Northbrook, jealously upholding the
statutory rights of his council and refusing to be led into courses
which might infringe those rights.* We find Lord Ripon, even when
fully conscious of serious differences which separated him from the
majority of his councillors, observing "There is a very strong desire
to support the Viceroy, of which I have much proof ".^ We see Lord
Curzon emphasising the gain to a viceroy of acting with, and not
without, his council,® and Lord Minto asserting, in opposition to
Lord Morley, the right of the Government of India, as a body, to be
consulted about the Anglo-Russian agreement.' There were ex-
tremely few decisions for which the viceroy's council did not share
responsibility with their president. Notable exceptions were the
abolition of import duties on the coarser kinds of cotton cloths in
Lord Lytton's days and the levy of a countervailing excise duty on
Indian cotton goods in the time of Lord Elgin. In both instances the
viceroy's action was due to pressure from the London cabinet; and
on the second occasion his council protested so strongly against a
measure which they considered unjust to Indian interests that the
secretary of state. Sir Henry Fowler, considered it necessary to convey
a weighty warning.
* Bosworth Smith, Life of Lord Lawrence y ii, 429-41, 589.
* Life ofFrere, n, 40 (Frere to Florence Nightingale).
' Buchan, Memoir of Lord Minto, p. 31 1.
* See Mallet, Life of Lord Northbrook, p. 91.
^ Wolf, op. cit. II, 50. ' Curzon, op. cit. 11, 74, 1 12-19.
' Morley, Recollections y 11," 178-9.
THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCILS 233
"A Government", he wrote, "whether in Downing Street or Calcutta, must act
as a homogeneous body, not as representing certain political opinions, but as
representing an executive authority which cannot act, whether in administration
or legislation, efficiently unless they act unitedly. . . . The existing law subjects the
Government of India to the control of the Imperial Government, and the Secretary
of State, who exercises that control, is responsible to Parliament. He cannot hold
office if the House of Commons disapproves of his official conduct. India is by the Act of
Parliament governed by and in the name of the Queen, and she governs by the
advice of a responsible minister. ... So long as any matter of administration or
policy is undecided, every member of the Government of India is at liberty to
express an opinion; but when once a certain line of policy has been adopted under
the direction of the Cabinet, it becomes the clear duty of every member of the
Government of India to consider not what that policy ought to be, but how effect
may best be given to the policy that has been decided on ; and if any member of
that Government is unable to do this, there is only one alternative open to him. . . .
The Cabinet have decided that the English precedent applies, and therefore that
the members of the (Viceroy's) Executive Council must, just as members of the
Cabinet do here, vote together (at legislative meetings) in support of Government
measures. If they are unable to do this, then the English precedent applies and the
objecting Member resigns before he either abstains from voting or votes against
the measure."^
These instructions were followed by the governor-general's coun-
cillors; but time brings its revenges, and in 1916 the reversal of the
policy imposed on the Government of India in 1 894 was initiated by
that government and assented to by the secretary of state.
— The New Legislative Councils —
No government can govern effectively unless it can legislate. The
subject of machinery for legislation was anxiously considered in
Calcutta and in London. In 1853 Wood, as president of the Board of
Control, had proposed and carried through parliament a measure
designed to provide that the governor-general's council, enlarged for
legislative purposes, should be simply a body which would assist the
supreme government in making laws.^ But Dalhousie started this
body off with 136 standing orders and a Hansard of its own. Its
debates were public. Of its additional members one was the Chief
Justice of Bengal, another was one of the judges of the Supreme
Court. The remaining additional members were officials from distant
provinces who were not indisposed to import fresh ideas into the close
atmosphere of Calcutta.^ Somewhat to the consternation of Wood
the council soon showed signs of considering itself "the nucleus of a
constitutional parliament".* Dalhousie, one of the most arbitrary of
governors-general, had viewed the prospect with no qualms.^ But,
as time went on, his successor found the debates sometimes embar-
rassing. He thought it "to be regretted that the Council was on its
^ Mrs R. Hamilton, Life of Lord Wolverhampton, pp. 315-17.
2 Wood to Dalhousie, 23 December, 1854 (Lee- Warner, Life of Dalhousie, 11, 237).
^ See Life of Frere, p. 309.
* See speech by Lord Ripon, under-secretary of state, Lords' Debates, 9 July, 1861.
^ See Lee-Warner, op. cit. 11, 234-5.
234 THE INDIAN GOVERNMENTS
first creation invested with forms and modes of procedure so closely
resembling Parliament".^ Frere, who had to pilot government bills
through the council, agreed and considered that the judges did the
mischief 2 In writing to the secretary of state he illustrated this view
and found his correspondent entirely sympathetic. The existing
council must go. But what was to take its place? Even as late as
i8 February, 1861, Wood was uncertain. No one in 1853, he wrote,
had dreamt of "a debating body with open doors and even quasi-
independence". Lord Dalhousie began wrongly and everything had
gone in the direction of fostering the notion of the council's being "an
independent legislative body ". It was all wrong and very unfortunate
because there was always a sympathy in England for independent
deliberation. Representative bodies, in any real sense, were impossible
^ in India, and he did not think that "any external element would
really do good". It might satisfy the English at Calcutta to have an
English merchant or planter in the council, but he was not sure that
it would improve the legislation ; and Indians could not be put in who
were "in any sense the exponents of active opinion, or who could take
any part in the deliberations".
Frere, on 10 April, 1861, drew a vivid picture of racial tension
which had followed on the Mutiny and of European non-official
impatience of official legislation, urging strongly that it was impossible
to recede^ and that, in view of the courseof events since 1853, Dalhousie
was in the main right. Had he not taken the line which he took,
things would have been worse than they were. The proper course
now was to assist the viceroy with a sort of senate able to advise him
in framing laws which could be of general application to all parts of
India and in confirming or annulling laws shaped by the provincial
legislatures which had been abolished in 1833 but must now be
restored. Whether "any external (legislative) element" on the
governor-general's council would really do any good or not was no
V longer a debatable question. Such an external element was essential.
"The days", he wrote, "are gone when you could govern India without much
caring what the Europeans and Europeanised community say or think of your
measures, and unless you have some barometer and safety-valve in the shape of
a deliberative Council, I believe you will always be liable to very unlooked for and
dangerous explosions.'*
He also urged that the new legislative bodies would make fatal
mistakes unless they were assisted by Indian members.*
Canning agreed with Frere, and Wood largely accepted these views,
but in a pessimistic mood. Writing to Frere on 17 August, 1861, he
ended thus:
^ The governor-general to the secretary of state, 9 December, 1859.
* Frere to Wood, 21 April, i86i {Life of Frere y i, 331. See also pp. 327 and 356).
* Correspondence, Life of Frere ^ i, 336.
* Idem f pp. 336-41.
THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCILS 235
The future government of India is a problem of the most serious import, utterly
unexampled in history, and one of which it seems to me very difficult to foresee the
progress.
In addressing the House of Commons on 6 June, 1 86 1 , ^ he had pointed .
out the impossibility of reverting to a system by which the executive /
government alone legislated for India. Nor could the English in India
have a representative body to frame the laws by which they should
be governed. It was equally impossible to assemble in India in one
place persons who would be real representatives of the various classes
of the Indian populations. The residents of the towns no more
represented the general Indian population than a highly educated
native of London represented a highland chieftain or a feudal baron
of six centuries ago. The legislative arrangements which he proposed
were based on Canning's recommendations. They became law and
were these.
For purposes of legislation the council of the governor-general was
reinforced by additional members, not less than six or more than
twelve, nominated by the governor-general and holding office for two
years. Of these additional members not less than one-half were non-
official (in no government service). Should the council meet for
legislative purposes within a lieutenant-governor's province, the
lieutenant-governor became an additional member. The functions of ,
the council when meeting for legislative purposes were strictly limited i
to the consideration and enactment of laws. It could transact no V
other business. It could entertain no motion except one for leave to
introduce a bill or having reference to a bill actually introduced.
Measures relating to the public revenue or public debt, religion, j
military or naval matters, or foreign relations could be introduced
only with the sanction of the governor-general. His assent was re- 1
quired to every act passed by the council ; and any such act might be
disallowed by the sovereign, acting through the secretary of state.
While the legislative power of the governor-general in council was
wide, it should not affect certain parliamentary enactments, or the
general authority of parliament, or any part of the unwritten laws or
constitution of the United Kingdom whereon the allegiance of the
subject or the sovereignty of the crown might depend. In order to
remove all doubts respecting the validity of rules or regulations
sanctioned by executive orders of the governor-general in council
for the more lately annexed or non-regulation provinces, a clause was
introduced declaring that no such rules or regulations should be
deemed invalid by reason of not having been made in conformity with
the provisions of the charter renewal acts.
Mr A. H. (afterwards Sir Henry) Layard proposed in the House
of Commons to insert an injunction directing that a certain number
of the additional members of the council, when sitting as a legislative
^ Hansard, clxiii, 638-9.
^
236 THE INDIAN GOVERNMENTS
body, should be natives of India. ^ But the secretary of state con-
sidered it undesirable to make statutory distinction in this connection
between different classes of Her Majesty's subjects. ^ Some of the
additional members appointed would certainly be natives of India.
The act conferred on the governor-general one power of a novel
/character. He was enabled to frame and issue on emergency, without
his council, ordinances which would not remain in force for more than
six months. Such a power had been urgently required on certain
occasions in 1857-8. Long afterwards ordinances were resorted to in
the first month of the great war, when the legislative council was
not sitting and immediate action was required in certain directions.
The power of issuing ordinances was vested in the governor-general
alone in order that the responsibility might be solely his. But the
reasons for such exceptional procedure should always be recorded and
should be submitted to Her Majesty's Government together with the
ordinance itself.^
The power of legislation which had been taken from the governors
in council of Madras and Bombay by the Charter Act of 1833 ^^^
restored in 1861. For legislative purposes these councils also were
expanded by additional members. No line of demarcation was drawn
between subjects reserved for the central and those allotted to the
local legislatures ; but while local legislation in certain cases could not
be undertaken without sanction from the governor-general, all acts of
local legislatures required his subsequent assent as well as that of the
local governor and were subject to disallowance by the crown. The
I governor-general was directed to establish a legislative council in
Bengal and empowered to set up similar councils in the North-
j Western Provinces and the Panjab when the time was ripe. Councils
> were established in Bengal in 1862, in the North- Western Provinces
in 1886, and in the Panjab and Burma in 1898.
The legislative councils established by the act of 186 1 were com-
mittees by means of which the executive government obtained advice
and help in legislation. \Vhile the government enacted the laws
through its council, the public had a right to make itself heard, and
the executive was able to defend its legislation. When the laws were
u once made they were binding on the government as well as on the
^ \ public. They had been made in a manner which ensured publicity
.A y and discussion and could only be changed by the deliberate and
* public process by which they had been made. The councils could only
deliberate on the legislation immediately at issue. They could not call
for information on other subjects or impugn acts of the administra-
tion.*
In the year 1870 there was a discussion^ between Lord Mayo's
•'*. Hansard, CLxra, 1016, 18 June, 1861. * Idem, p. 1027.
» Ilbert, Digest, pp. 215-16, 566, para. 26, Wood's dispatch of 9 August, 1861.
* See Report on Constitutional Reforms, 191 8, p. 54.
' See Accounts and Papers, 15, East India, 1876, LVi, 6-10.
LEGISLATIVE CONTROL FROM LONDON 237
government and the Duke of Argyll, then secretary of state, the former
claiming that they had been endowed by section 22 of the 1861
Councils Act with legislative discretion which they should exercise to
the best of their judgment. The secretary of state could, of course,
disallow any law which they passed. They could not, however, he expected
to introduce any measure of which they disapproved.
Any other view would invest the Secretary of State with the character of the
legislator for British India and would convert the Legislative Council into a mere
instrument to be used by him for that purpose.
On 24 November, 1870, the duke replied that theoretical incon-
veniences were inseparably connected with the working of such a
machinery of government as that through which the empire of India
was ruled from England, but these could in practice be reduced to
a minimum by mutual respect on the part of those concerned. One
great principle underlay the whole system. The final control and direction of Ij
1/ affairs in India rested with the Home Government. It made no real difference '
f^if its directions related to legislative affairs. If the crown's interposition
were limited to a veto on acts passed in India, the queen's government
would be helpless to secure legislative sanction for any measures,
however essential it might deem them to be, for the welfaie or safety
of the Indian Empire. It followed, then, that this government must
hold in its hands the ultimate power of requiring the governor-
general to introduce a measure and requiring the members of the
Indian government to vote for it. This was the practice in all parts
of the queen's dominions where the authority of the legislative body
was not derived from the principle of popular representation. It
was a question of abstract right, not of ordinary procedure. It was
only necessary to bear in mind where the seat of ultimate authority
was placed in order to secure on both sides that fairness and modera-
tion without which no political constitution could work with smooth-
ness and success. Lord Mayo's government on i February, 1871,
accepted this doctrine, as it defined a principle which they had never
intended to question; they were glad, however, to hear that the
ruling would not be applied to ordinary procedure but only "with
great deliberation and on the rarest occasions".
The enlargements of the legislative councils in 1892, 1909 and 191 9
are described in later chapters. Those of 1892 were made in response
to the demands of "^a limited but important section of Indian opinion "
and established the fact of election to the councils by certain public
bodies ; but the government nominated a majority of the members of
each council and maintained official majorities on the ground that no
administration which did not possess sufficient power to carry out
whatever measures it considered to be for the public interest could
remain at the head of affairs among the different Indian nationalities.^
^ See Lord Dufferin's picture of the India of his day, Report on Constitutional Reforms,
1918, p. 117.
238 THE INDIAN GOVERNMENTS
The Morley-Minto reforms were the first real breach in the system
of 1 86 1. The king's proclamation of 2 November, 1908, had an-
nounced that "the principle of representative institutions which had
from the first been gradually introduced" would now be "prudently
extended". The reforms conceded non-official majorities on the
provincial legislative councils composed mainly of elected members,
but also of persons nominated by the governments concerned. They
allowed any member to divide his council on financial questions and
all councils to discuss matters of public importance and to make re-
commendations to the executive governments. But on the imperial
legislative council the official majority was retained. This reservation
was justified by Morley on the ground that the new councils were not
designed to pave the way to the establishment of a parliamentary
system, a goal to which he would not "for one moment aspire".^ But
by establishing non-official majorities on provincial legislative councils
and by admitting an Indian gentleman to a seat on the governor-
general's executive council, the core of authority in India, a step
which was taken, with some searchings of heart, ^ on the viceroy's
recommendation, the way was prepared for further developments
which were to follow with unexpected rapidity under the pressure of
movements which are described in later chapters.
The Provincial Governments
The following are now the major provmces of British India :
Province Population (1921)
Madras 42,300,000
Bengal 46,700,000
United Provinces of Agra and Oudh 45,600,000
Bihar and Orissa ... ... ... 34,000,000
Bombay 19,300,000
Assam ... ... ... 7,600,000
Panjab 20,700,000
Central Provinces and Berar ... 13,900,000
Bm-ma 13,200,000
The minor provinces are:
The North-West Frontier Province 2,250,000
British Baluchistan 422,000
Ajmer-Merwara 496,000
Coorg ... ... ... 164,000
Andaman and Nicobar Islands ... 27,000
Delhi 486,000
Thus the total population of British territory in India is 247 millions.
Between the years 1858 and 1918 changes were made in the titles,
boundaries and governments of certain provinces originally without
any friction or difficulty, but on one occasion resented by a local
* Morley, Indian Spucfus, p. 9a. ' See Morley, RecolUctions, 11, 301-3.
PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS 239
government^ and on another raising an unexpected but violent storm
of local fury. 2
Madras and Bombay remained under a governor in council
throughout. Distinguished by the traditions of their old independence
and by the presence of great seaports, they still retained some relics of
their original pri\dleges. Each government could correspond directly
with the secretary of state if no financial considerations were involved.
Each could appeal to him against orders of the Government of India
and possessed full discretion in selecting men for important provincial
offices. Both were less liable to supervision than other provinces in
the administration of forests and land-revenue. In 1909, under the
Morley-Minto reforms, the executive council of the governor in each
was increased by the addition of an Indian member. In emergencies
the governor could overrule his colleagues, but ordinarily questions
were decided by majority votes.
Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Assam remained under one lieutenant-
governor until 1874, when Assam was constituted a separate province
and placed under a chief commissioner.
In the year 1 905 Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Assam were converted
by the ill-fated "Partition" into two provinces under lieutenant-
governors, one composed of Western Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, the
other of Eastern Bengal and Assam. In 19 10 the lieutenant-governor
of Western Bengal was given an executive council of two British civil
servants and one Indian non-official.
In 191 1 Lord Curzon's partition was set aside. The two new pro-
vinces became three. Bengal became the charge of a governor in
council; Bihar and Orissa were placed under a lieutenant-governor
in council ; Assam was entrusted to a chief commissioner.
At the commencement of our period the present United
Provinces of Agra and Oudh were two pro\dnces under separate
administrations. The Agra Province was known as the North-
Western Provinces and was under a lieutenant-governor. Oudh was
the charge of a chief commissioner. In 1877 the offices of lieutenant-
governor of the North- Western Provinces and chief commissioner of
Oudh were united in the same person. In 1902 the provinces were
named the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh in order to avoid all
confusion between their title and that of the then newly-created
North- West Frontier Province.
The chief commissioner of the Panjab became a lieutenant-
governor in 1859. In 1 90 1 the frontier districts of the Panjab beyond
the Indus were formed into a separate charge under a chief com-
missioner and called the North- West Frontier Province.
The Central Provinces were formed in 1861 by combining the
Sagor and Narbada territories with the Nagpur territories in one
charge under a chief commissioner. Berar was placed under the same
^ See Ronaldshay, Life of Lord Curzon, vol. ii, chap. viii. * Idem, chap. xxiv.
240 THE INDIAN GOVERNMENTS
administration when, in 1902, it was leased in perpetuity to the
British by the Nizam of Hyderabad.
Lower Burma became the charge of a chief commissioner in
i860. In 1886 the kingdom of Upper Burma was added to it after
the third Burmese War, and the whole was called the province of
Burma. In 1897 the chief commissioner became a lieutenant-
governor.
The six minor provinces are under chief commissioners. The North-
West Frontier Province was carved out of the Panjab in 1901. British
Baluchistan was incorporated in British India in 1887. The Andaman
and the Nicobar Islands were united under a chief commissioner in
1872. The city of Delhi with a small area surrounding it was con-
stituted an "administrative enclave" under a chief commissioner in
1 91 2 when the imperial capital was transferred there from Calcutta.
Relations between the Central and the
Provincial Governments
The central government necessarily kept in its own hands functions
which concerned the whole empire. It also exercised financial,
legislative and administrative control over the provincial govern-
ments.
The Charter Act of 1833 had centralised the administration of the
country's finances in the hands of the Government of India, The act
of 1858 vested the superintendence of the revenues and expenditure
of the country in the secretary of state in council. More than
5(^42,000,000 were added to the public debt by the troubles of 1857-8 ;
all branches of the administration needed reorganisation, and im-
provements of every kind were called for. An efficient system of
public accounts and strict financial control was absolutely necessaiy ;
and James Wilson, financial secretary to the treasury, was dispatched
to India as member of the governor-generars council and lived just
long enough to lay the foundations of a system under which the
central government was to retain in its own hands an extensive
measure of financial control. Rules of great stringency were imposed.
But the central government possessed neither time nor knowledge
sufficient to exercise such far-reaching responsibility in many details
which should have been left to the discretion of local governments ;
and much wrangling and waste of time resulted from these rigid
arrangements. For some years the central government, which was
itself subject to the secretary of state in all such matters as related
to borrowing, changes of taxation and general fiscal policy, main-
tained this meticulous control. But friction increased; and after
careful deliberation, a system of financial decentralisation was in-
augurated by Lord Mayo which was afterwards developed with
beneficial effect. Even at the end of our period, however, special
METHODS OF CONTROL 241
revenues were assigned to each province by the central government,
and were shown with corresponding expenditure in the imperial
budget while each provincial budget required the approval of the
central government, whose sanction was requisite for proposals in-
volving large expenditure and the creation of posts. The responsi-
bility of that government to the secretary of state was firmly insisted
on. In 1907 Lord Morley appointed a Decentralisation Commission
to simplify relations between the central government and its sub-
ordinate and co-ordinate parts ; but this body proposed no material
change in financial relations between the central and provincial
governments. The secretary of state himself continued to hold the
central government in strict financial subordination. He watched
the expenditure of Indian revenues "as the ferocious dragon of the
old legend watched the golden apples".^ Held in such rigid sub-
ordination, expected to keep down provincial charges, sharing in
provincial proceeds, controlling provincial taxation, the central
government could not effectively decentralise finance.
While legislating for British India, that government also controlled /
provincial legislation. Local legislatures, however, made laws "for /
the peace and good government" of their provinces on condition that 1/
no such laws affected any act of parliament, or, without previous ^
sanction, any act of the governor-generars legislative council. They
could not, without the previous permission of the governor-general
in council, consider any law affecting the religion or religious rites
and usages of any class of British subjects in India, or regulating
patents or copyright, or affecting the relations of the government with
foreign princes or states. Their discretion was further curtailed by the
fact that the field open to them was largely covered by acts of the
imperial legislative council. That body still exercised its powers in ,
matters which were handled for all provinces on uniform lines such '
as Penal and Procedure Codes, laws for prisons and police, for forests,
mines, factories and the preservation of the public health. Every
local act required the subsequent assent of the governor-general; and
local governments submitted all projects for legislation to the central
government and secretary of state for approval. Provincial legisla-
tures were still in theory expansions of the executive government for
the purpose of law-making. ^
Every provincial government was required to obey the orders of .
the governor-general in council, and to keep him constantly and /
diligently informed of its administrative proceedings and of allW
matters which ought to be reported to him. He was required by
statute to control all its proceedings.^ The reasons for so much cen-
tralisation of authority are thus explained in the Montagu-Chelmsford
Report:
^ Morley, Indian Speeches, p. 46. ^ Report on Constitutional Reforms, 191 8, p. 98.
^ Seesection45, Government of India Act, 1 91 5 (which consolidated all previous statutes) .
CHI VI i6
242 THE INDIAN GOVERNMENTS
It is easy to see that in many respects India is one single and undivided country,
in which much work must be done on uniform lines. The main Services which
execute the orders of provincial governments have been recruited from England
on terms guaranteed by the Secretary of State, with the result that many questions
affecting them cannot be determined by any provincial government. Again the
development of trade and industry and science throughout India has favoured the
tendency at headquarters to formulate and pursue a uniform policy. Business and
industry might be seriously hampered if (even with one law for India) the provinces
were left to administer such matters as statistics, patents, copyright, insurance,
income-tax, explosives or mining on different lines. Particularly in the more
scientific spheres — such as bacteriology, or agricultural and veterinary science —
advance has tended to concentration, because the expert services were much too
small to be organised on a provincial basis, and also because the experience and
resources of any one institution would not be fully used unless they were placed at
the disposal of the whole country. Moreover in the past the Government of India
have regarded themselves as distinctly charged with the duty of framing policy
and inspiring reforms for the whole of India. ^
The central government, with the sanction of the secretary of state,
frequently appointed commissions of enquiry to report on such
questions of grave concern as famine, irrigation, police or education.
After consultation with provincial governments regarding recom-
mendations contained in the reports of such commissions the Govern-
ment of India formulated decisions which were often accompanied
by grants earmarked for the purpose of carrying out reforms. Such
reforms sometimes included the appointment of new advising or
inspecting officers at headquarters and then tended to encourage
interference with local discretion. In any case the report of a com-
mission enabled the central government to take careful stock of a
critical situation, and to shape new policy.
The whole position was aptly summed up by Lord Morley's
Decentralisation Commission:
Among the important matters which the Central Government retain in their
own hands are those relating to foreign affairs, the defences of the country, general
taxation, currency, debt, tariffs, posts and telegraphs, railways and accounts and
auditing. Ordinary internal administration, police, civil and criminal justice,
prisons, the assessment and collection of the revenues, education, medical and
sanitary arrangements, irrigation, buildings and roads, forests and the control over
municipal and rural boards fall to the share of provincial governments. But even
in these matters the Government of India exercise a general and constant control.
They lay down lines of policy and test their application from the administration
reports and returns relating to the main departments under the Local Governments.
They also employ expert officers to inspect and advise upon a number of depart-
ments which are primarily administered by the Local Governments, including
Agriculture, Irrigation, Forests, Medical, Sanitation, Education, Excise and Salt,
Printing and Stationery, and Archaeology.
The control of the Government of India is, moreover, not confined to prescription
of policy and to action taken upon reports and inspections. It assumes more specific
forms. They scrutinise, and when necessary, modify the annual budgets of the
Local Governments. Every newly created appointment of importance, every
material alteration in service grades, has to receive their specific approval, and in
many cases reference to the Secretary of State is likewise necessary. . . . Moreover
^ Report on Constitutional Reforms ^ 191 8, p. 99.
CENTRALISATION 243
the general conditions of Government Service, such as leave, pension and travelling
allowance rules, and the Public Works and Forest Codes are all strictly prescribed
by the Central Government, either suo motu or on instruction from the Secretary
of State. Lastly there is a wide field of appeal to the Government of India, as also
the Secretary of State, from persons who may deem themselves aggrieved by the
action of a Local Government.
The essential point to be borne in mind is that at present, even in matters pri-
marily assigned to the Provincial Governments, these act as agents of the Govern-
ment of India who exercise a very full and constant check over their proceedings.
Public policy and legislation were everywhere controlled by the
central government which was, in its turn, dominated by its re-
sponsibility to parliament through the secretary of state. Both policy
and laws were latterly much influenced by Indian councillors; but
the last word and the whole responsibility lay with the British govern-
ment. The basic principle was defined by Lord Dufferin:
It is absolutely necessary, not merely for the maintenance of our own power, but
for the good government of the country and for the general content of all classes,
and especially of the people at large, that England should never abdicate the supreme
control of public affairs, or delegate to a minority or a class, the duty of providing
for the diversified communities over which she rules. ^
Tradition and practice operated to demarcate "spheres of in-
fluence" for the central and the provincial governments, but the
demarcation was neither clear-cut nor legally recognised. As the
major provinces were really different countries, their governments
necessarily exercised considerable liberty in the- management of
domestic affairs. Differences of opinion periodically arose as to the
lengths to which this liberty should go. Provincial governors sometimes
complained of vexatious interference. ^ Lord Curzon, on the other
hand, complained in 1901 that in respect of educational policy the
local governments had become a "sort of heptarchy", and at another
time proposed to reduce Madras and Bombay to the status of pro-
vinces in the charge of lieutenant-governors.^ Yet no constitution can
work successfully in a sub-continent so vast and various as India which
does not concede a large degree of discretion to provincial rulers. The
best of these were willing to trust their executive officers ; and they
were certainly justified in expecting a generous measure of confidence
from their own superiors. This, as a rule, they received; but we find
Lord Morley writing to Lord Minto on 15 July, 1909:
All that you say about lieutenant-governors fills me with sympathy, compre-
hension and holy rage. You have now three capable men below you, each of them
bent in a more or less quiet way on having his head, and each entitled to have his
views respectfully considered, and nine times out of ten probably right, but the
tenth time capable of bringing things into a dangerous mess. And then there is
the weak man, who is a greater nuisance than the strong uppish man.*
Lord Sydenham illustrates Morley's reluctance to rely on the con-
^ Lyall, Life of Dufferin, ii, 203.
2 Life of Frere, i, 441-2; Lord Sydenham, My Working Life, pp. 229-31, also 247.
* Ronaldshay, op. cit. 11, 57-60, 416. * Morley, Recollections, 11, 263.
16-2
244 THE INDIAN GOVERNMENTS
victions of responsible rulers in personal and daily touch with facts ^
and realities. Morley certainly carried this feeling to excessive
lengths. A uniform policy which sets the time for all subordinates is
obviously necessary. But India is still the country of which Wood
said in 1853, "On nearly all sides I find that there is the greatest
difference between its various parts". Diversity of circumstances
renders general conditions difficult to arrive at ; and provincial rulers
who are not backward in pressing their convictions, even at the cost
of jarring on doctrines and theories conceived in a very different
atmosphere, are entitled to a full and unbiassed hearing. It is still
true that
there can be no successful government in India unless the fundamental fact of the
immense diversities of Indian countries and peoples be recognised, and each great
province be administered by its own separate government with a minimum of
interference from outside.^
The Last Word
We have seen the secretary of state growing in stature as years went
by, anxious at times to play an energetic part in the actual governing
of India, and reluctant to think that after all this must be the task of
the men on the spot. Throughout our period it was the central and
provincial governments who, working through the officers of the public
services among vast Asiatic communities split into thousands of
sections and possessed of traditions and usages of immemorial an-
tiquity, gave shape and living form to the policies of distant parlia-
ments and cabinets. It was they who brought India through the
supreme trial of more than four years of a world-wide war. It was
the governor-general in council who designed the arrangements of
1 86 1, initiated the discussions which led to the constitutional changes
of 1892 and 1909, and suggested the momentous declaration of
20 August, 191 7, although he did not frame its terms.
In Lord Birkenhead's words of 5 November, 1929,^ we find an
echo of the Duke of Argyll's dispatch of 1870.
"The authority and position of the secretary of state", said the late holder of
that office, "are complementary of the authority and position of the viceroy.
Sometimes the special atmosphere in which the viceroy lives, or the wholly different
atmosphere in which the secretary of state lives, may be the corrective of a rash
impulse, whether that be formed in Delhi or in Whitehall."
Differences of opinion, he added, must sometimes arise between these
high authorities. With good will on both sides these were almost
invariably accommodated. The last word necessarily rested with the
representative of the cabinet and parliament of this country. It is
much to be regretted that so great a public servant as Lord Curzon
found it so hard to accept this obvious consideration. But only on
these terms can viceroys discharge their heavy and harassing re-
sponsibilities.
^ My Working Life^ p. 226. * Strachey, India, p. 64. ' Hansard, Lords Debates.
CHAPTER XIII
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
1858-1918
X HE sixty years which followed the suppression of the Mutiny were
in Bengal years of rapidly increasing population, of growing wealth,
of expanding communications, of widely extending knowledge and
contact with Western ideas. In spite of a daily burden of increasing
case-work, district officers and their subordinates were constantly
called on to make fresh efforts in new directions, to push forward
education, vaccination, sanitary improvement, local self-government,
to throw all their energies into carrying out schemes devised by higher
authority. But before proceeding with the history of district adminis-
tration, we must observe the succession of changes which finally
transformed the old Lower Provinces (Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and
Assam) into the modern provinces of {a) Bengal, {b) Bihar and
Orissa, and {c) Assam.
The first of these changes was the transfer of Assam in 1874 from
the charge of the lieutenant-governor of Bengal to that of a separate
chief commissioner. The next in 1905 was the partition of Bengal,
Bihar and Orissa into two new provinces of Western Bengal, Bihar
and Orissa and Eastern Bengal and Assam. Each of these charges
was committed to a lieutenant-governor ; and the lieutenant-governor
of the western province was from 1910 assisted by an executive council
which consisted of two British members and one Indian. In 191 2
Assam was again handed over to a chief commissioner ; Bihar and
Orissa were entrusted to a lieutenant-governor in council; and
Bengal was made over to a governor in council. Each executive
council consisted of two British members of the civil service and a
non-official Indian gentleman.
We have seen that from 1859 the magistrate-and-collector, or
district officer, once more became sole head of the district. The police
were his subordinates, although from 1861 they were managed and
disciplined by a British superintendent, often supported by an as-
sistant superintendent. These officers and their men belonged to a
provincial force which was presided over by an inspector-general and
two or more deputy inspectors-general with whom the district officer
constantly corresponded. He also conducted business with the
director of public instruction, with the opium agent, with the chief
engineer, and, as time went on and communications extended, with
the heads of other departments which gradually came into being,
such as excise, jails, sanitation, land records. He had long been
subordinate to a commissioner, but now was menaced by a variety of
246 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
masters. Such a state of affairs was likely to lead to overmuch corre-
spondence, to neglect of the real work of administration and to loss
of touch with the needs of the people of his charge. Perceiving the
danger, George Campbell, lieutenant-governor from 1871 to 1874,
laid down emphatically the principle that heads of departments were
on no account to dictate to district officers, who within their charges
should, subject to the control of their commissioners, be supreme over
everyone and everything except the courts of justice. The police, who
were then their sole agency for all purposes connected with the peace,
order and conservancy of their districts, the regulation of public
assembUes and other administrative matters, must be employed with
discrimination. Campbell was anxious to devise some other sub-
ordinate agency which would relieve the police of such miscellaneous
duties as attention to the state of the roads ; but he did not succeed
in an attempt to do this. There was in Bengal no village record system,
no collection of revenue by subdi visional Indian officials. It was,
therefore, impossible to find sufficient employment for a new sub-
ordinate executive establishment.
The great and growing city of Calcutta was not included in a
district, although it formed part of the charge of the commissioner of
the principal or presidency division. Its stamps and customs were
under the direct superintendence of the Board of Revenue. It
possessed a special police establishment under the control of a special
commissioner assisted by deputy commissioners. Criminal justice was
administered by five stipendiary magistrates, and by a municipal
magistrate appointed to try exclusively offences under the municipal
acts.
Honorary magistrates had been appointed in some districts of the
Lower Provinces in the year 1857 in order that the services and in-
fluence of land-holders and resident non-official Europeans might be
actively enUsted in support of the administration. Indigo planters in
Bihar had in that stormy time been authorised to raise small bodies
of police for the protection of their immediate neighbourhoods^ and
in command of these had done good service. In 1859, when the
' Mutiny was over, Sir Frederick Halliday abolished honorary magis-
tracies ; but their value had been proved and on the suggestion of the
Government of India, his successor. Sir John Peter Grant, appointed
forty-five honorary magistrates in Calcutta and forty-five more in the
mufassal or outlying districts. All of these were zamindars, European
planters, or other persons of position ; they were generally invested
\i with power to try minor cases only, and nowhere exercised control
over the police. The system was extended in 1872-3 by Sir George
Campbell, and again in 1889 by Sir Stuart Bayley, with a view to
promoting habits of self-government. Benches of honorary magis-
trates were estabHshcd in municipalities. Much good work was done
^ Buck] and, Bengal under the Lieutenant-Governors y i, 74.
LAW COURTS AND THE BAR 247
by the honorary magistrates, and an accumulating burden of litiga-
tion was somewhat lightened.
Municipal boards and local cess committees, established at first
under strict official control with very limited powers, developed in
the 'eighties into municipal and district boards with wider responsi-
bilities, containing an official element and generally presided over by
district officers. Innovations transplanted from the West, they were
at first hardly appreciated or understood except in large centres of
population where municipal boards formed "an oasis of popular
control in the midst of an official system",^ concerning themselves ^
with roads, schools, hospitals, sanitation and vaccination. The district
boards excited no popular interest partly perhaps because no attempt
was made to graft them on to the village ^^ chaukidarV^ panchayats, or
councils of five, whose duties were still confined to assessment and
collection of the local police rate levied for payment of the village
chaukidars (watchmen).
Civil and criminal courts were subject to the jurisdiction of the
Calcutta High Court of Judicature which was established by letters
patent on 14 May, 1862, and took the place of the old Supreme Court
and the Company's "Sadr Adalat". Small cause courts for the trial
of civil suits were set up in i860 under judges, who in 1867 were
amalgamated with the "Principal Sadr Amins" and the munsiffs^ in
a single provincial department, the higher grade of which was com-
posed of "subordinate judges", and the lower oimunsiffs. The district
and sessions judge presided over the civil and criminal courts of a
district; but the district officer was expected to watch and supervise
generally the proceedings of his subordinate magistrates. By Act X
of 1859, to which we shall refer later on, original jurisdiction in suits
between landlord and tenant was transferred from the civil courts to
the (revenue) courts of the collector and his assistants. But this
arrangement was cancelled by Act VHI of 1869 when suits for rent or
ejectment of tenants returned to the civil courts. Suits and cases, the
whole volume of work transacted by district establishments, increased
very greatly during our period, particularly in Eastern Bengal, and
led to proposals for the partition of certain districts which at first
excited little or no popular opposition.
But gradually there came a change. With a rapid extension of
communications, of intercourse with England, of Western education,
lawyers grew and multiplied. Local bars increased, developing not
only at district but at subdi visional headquarters. In Mymensingh,
for example, the local bar in 1872 consisted of fifty-two pleaders; in
19 1 3 it mustered 403 pleaders and barristers, 384 mukhtars (law-
agents) and ninety-six revenue agents. The population of that district
indeed had almost doubled within the period; but legal business
would not have afforded a livelihood, adequate or inadequate, to so
^ Report on Constitutional Reforms, 1918, p. 104. ^ Qf^ chap, ii, supra.
248 DISTRtCt ADMINiSTRATlON IN BENGAL
many had it not been stimulated by a liberal employment of touts.
It increased enormously; and the energies of district and subdivisional
officers were more and more confined to the business of trying cases.
District officers were also oppressed by growing correspondence with
the various provincial departments. Not only were they prevented
from moving freely about their districts and becoming acquainted
sufficiently with actual conditions, but the quality of their work at
headquarters necessarily suffered. The eventual situation has been
faithfully described by one of their number, ^ who wrote in 1 9 1 3 :
As matters stand at present, we are neglecting the work which matters most
because neglect does not show; and in order that we may do the work which is
intrinsically of no greater importance, but which must have the preference because
it comes more immediately to the notice of the government. It is because the mass
of the people are so submissive to authority, and because they cherish an old belief
that the British government desires to do justice, that they do not make their voices
heard, when the district officer fails to secure them from such delay in obtaining
justice in the criminal courts as amounts to a denial of justice, because he has no
time to control the work of the courts ; when the district officer fails to give them a
fair price for their homestead land acquired for a public purpose because he has
not time to control the work of the "Land Acqusition Deputy Collector". . . .None
of these defects come very prominently before the notice of government, because
the people do not often complain; but the cumulative effect of these omissions,
though slow, cannot fail to be far-reaching; and there is grave danger that the
effect may become more rapid, now that ill-disposed people have got to work to
persuade the masses that government does not care for their interests. ^
Partition or rearrangement of charges was the only effective remedy
for such a state of affairs, but involved considerable initial expenditure
of public revenues and for this reason excited adverse criticism. As,
too, every partition implied some disturbance of vested interests, some
apprehensions of loss of clients, some loss of custom to shops in
particular towns; as after 1905 the agitation against the partition of
Bengal struck a key-note which reverberated among the Hindu
educated classes in every town throughout the province; however
desirable a partition might be, it was always a signal for loud news-
paper protest. But we have carried this part of our narrative far, and
must return to the peaceful period which followed the Mutiny.
It was recognised then that no more time must be lost in providing
the Lower Provinces with improved communications, and that in
order to finance a satisfactory scheme local rates must be introduced.
The landlords, however, urged that when the permanent settlement
was concluded, they were informed that no demand would ever be
made on them, their heirs and successors, "for an augmentation of
the public assessment in consequence of the improvement of their
respective estates'*. They were therefore not liable to pay road or
education cesses. The dispute was finally settled by the Duke of
Argyll, secretary of state, who ruled in 1870 that
rating for local expenditure is to be regarded, as it had hitherto been regarded in
all provinces of the empire, as taxation separate and distinct from the ordinary
^ Report of the Bengal District Administration Committee^ 191 3-14, p. 24.
TENANCY LAW 249
land-revenue; that the levying of such rates upon the holders of land irrespective
of the amount of their land assessment involves no breach of faith on the part of
the government, whether as regards holders of permanent or temporary tenures ;
and that where rates are levied at all, they ought, as far as may be possible, to be
levied equally without distinction and without exemption upon all holders of
property assessable to the rate.
Effect was given to this decision by the Road Cess Act passed in 1871,
which authorised the raising of a local rate or cess for the construction
and maintenance of roads and other means of communication, pre-
scribing a valuation of land and a registration of the holders of landed
interests. Landlords, lessees, mortgagees, sub-proprietors were required
to present returns of receipts, and were informed that only rents
returned would be realisable by process of law. Records and valua-
tions of all landed property liable for payment of the cess were pre-
pared. Cesses were to be spent entirely within the districts wherein
they were levied.^
Tenants generally still suffered from the absence of any system of
registration of their rights and holdings. Act X of 1859, the first
tenant law passed for Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, named classes of
tenants whose rents were unalterable, and conferred a right of
occupancy on tenants who had held the same land for at least twelve
years, either personally or through predecessors from whom they had
inherited their holdings. It also limited the right of distraint which
till then had been exercised by landlords in a very arbitrary fashion.
But while doing these things, it failed adequately to secure the
occupancy rights which it created. It further failed to safeguard the
power which it conferred on landlords of enhancing occupancy rents
which fell below prevailing rates. Above all it made no provision for
any field-to-field survey, or for the preparation of records of rights.
Thus the tenants, and indeed any party to a case on whom lay a
burden of proof, still suffered from serious disabilities in law courts.
Tenants too were frequently shifted by their zamindars from one
holding to another in order to prevent their acquiring occupancy
right in any holding. In 1872 serious trouble developed in the Pubna
district, where landlords habitually exacted heavy cesses from tenants
and even endeavoured to obtain written agreements to pay rents
swollen by such unjust demands. The victims organised themselves
for systematic resistance, proclaiming that they were rebelling against
their tyrants and not against the government. Disturbances took
place ; the neighbouring district of Bogra caught the contagion ; and
outward peace was only restored by the mediation of the district
officers, while discussions were started which eventually led to legisla-
tion in 1885, when a new Bengal Tenancy Act superseded the act of
1859. It was based on three principles, fixity of tenure for the tenant,
an adjustment of rent which would enable the landlord to obtain his
1 O'Malley, History of Bengal , p. 458.
250 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
fair share of increment in the value of the produce of the soil, and
settlement of disputes between landlords and tenants on equitable
principles. It laid down the rule that occupancy right could be
acquired in all land held by a tenant provided that for twelve years
previously the occupier had held any land whatever in the village,
and thus put an end to the zamindars' practice of shifting tenants
arbiti'arily from one holding to another. It empowered tlie central
government to order a survey and the preparation of a record of rights
in any area, and permitted the provincial government to direct
similar operations to be undertaken in any estate where they were
asked for by either side or were considered necessary to compose
disputes. A field-to-field survey, a preparation of records, and a
settlement of occupancy rents began in North Bihar; and later on
other surveys and settlements were begun in various Bengal districts.
All these operations were conducted by a staff which worked under
a director of land records. One-fourth of the cost was borne by the
government and three-fourths by landlords and tenants concerned.
In this way effective steps were at last taken to introduce system,
justice and clarity into revenue administration in Bengal. A further
act, passed by the provincial legislative council in 1895, required
privileged tenants to register all changes in their holdings due to
succession or transfer. Records of rights were to be revised periodically
and not checked and maintained continuously after the fashion
followed in the North-Western Provinces and Panjab. The results of
these new measures were beneficial.
We have now examined the system and framework of district ad-
ministration in Bengal and have reviewed agrarian legislation. Field-
to-field survey and settlement of occupancy rents, and preparation of
a record of rights, when at last ordered by the government, were
carried out under the supervision of the officers of the land records
and settlement departments. The outside world knows nothing of the
immense debt which rural India, and by far the greater part of India
is rural, owes to these men who were always selected with particular
care. Their devotion, their elaborate diligence, their tireless sympathy
with the people, can be adequately appreciated only by those who
have seen them at work or inherited the fruits of their labours. A very
accurate idea of economic conditions in a fairly typical Bengal district
may be gathered from a book written by the late Mr J. C. Jack, of
the Indian civil service, a brilliant and devoted settiement officer.
The people of Faridpur, the district of which he wrote, are favoured
by a rich soil and generally live in comfort, obtaining sufficient sub-
sistence from agriculture and fishing, but often get into debt, mainly
by reason of their improvidence and lavish expenditure on marriages
and other domestic ceremonies. They pay little in taxes. Many
members of the cultivating classes enter menial or domestic service.
The big landlords of the province are generally absentees ; the small
THE BHADRALOK 251
or ordinary landlords, the co-sharers, the lessees, the mortgagees,
sub-lessees, sub-mortgagees are seldom in contact with the land and
content themselves with collecting their rents, having little or no
inclination for farming of any kind. The small land-holders are largely
intermingled with the professional and clerical classes, and all alike
are known as bhadralok (respectable people), who live not only in
towns as in other provinces, but also in villages. The original bhadralok
were Brahmans, Kayesthas (writers) or Baidyas (physicians) ; but the
spread of Western education and the practical advantages of university
credentials have caused many members of lower castes to adopt
bhadralok ideals. It is the bhadralok who have shown that consuming
passion for English education which has distinguished Bengal. It is
they who have established Anglo-vernacular schools in towns and
villages on a scale unknown elsewhere in India, schools attended by
throngs of youths, who look to the Calcutta University as their portal
to a profession and a satisfactory marriage. Mr Jack says that in
Faridpur the average income of the bhadralok is higher than that of any
other class, largely because the lawyers are all bhadralok and "an able
lawyer will make ^wq or ten times as much a year as an equally able
doctor, while even an incapable lawyer will make a better income
than most capable members of other professions". Competition,
however, is keen ; and in Faridpur and elsewhere many bhadralok live
in poverty. The strong position of this class in rural areas is un-
challenged by any martial caste. There are none of the army pen-
sioners who count for so much in many districts of other provinces.
The agriculturists are generally timid or apathetic; and, as we have
seen, in earUer times bands of brigands battened on numbers of
unresisting victims. Between the years 1905 and 191 6 brigandage and
terrorism were revived and practised by bhadralok youths known as
"political" dacoits.
Internal trade in Bengal depends largely on means of communica-
tion, which improved greatly within our period, but were defective
even at its close. In the eastern portion of the province trade is mainly
carried on boats. Fishing and weaving are the principal industries;
but weaving has suffered greatly from the introduction of factory-
made goods and from the ravages of malaria among workmen ab-
sorbed in sedentary pursuits. Mr Jack observes that weavers have
taken largely to agriculture or domestic service. From i860 onwards
Calcutta and its neighbourhood were largely affected by a remarkable
expansion of foreign trade, a general increase of prices, and a rise in
the standard of living. Large industrial works were started, conducted
by machinery and affording employment to numbers of labourers
who came from villages and returned to their lands at certain seasons.
In 1 88 1 there were nineteen jute mills with 39,000 operatives; in 191 1
there were fifty-eight jute mills and 200,000 operatives. Coalfields
were developed at Raniganj, Jherria and Giridih; but inland centres
252 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
of industry were few; the villages remained the chief units of economic
life and village lands were parcelled out in small holdings. Various
parts of the Lower Provinces have been visited by drought from time
to time. The most notable of these visitations was the terrible Orissa
famine. ^
Toward the close of the viceroyalty of Lord Gurzon it became
increasingly apparent that the Lower Provinces generally, and the
eastern half of Bengal particularly, were administratively starved.
Service for Europeans in these eastern districts was generally solitary
and unhealthy. Its unpopularity encouraged a tacit assumption that
this rich and fertile area with its teeming populations required no
more than a meagre official establishment. Its communications were
bad ; its government buildings were mean and inadequate ; its police
stations were few. It contained no troops and no mounted police.
Several of its districts were too large for administration by a single
magistrate-and-collector. Its agricultural population was becoming
richer and more litigious; its law courts and district establishments
were over-burdened with work ; its scattered schools and colleges were
multiplying and producing a growing throng of young men who
turned their faces persistently towards government service or the
overstocked bar. Disappointment bred discontent which was ag-
gravated by political and newspaper teachings that foreign rule was
the source of the mischief Meantime civil servants, and especially
those whose lot lay in Eastern Bengal, were generally tied to their
desks and found little time for informal contact with the people of
their districts. In the extensive Dacca and Chittagong divisions with
their population of 17 J millions, there were toward the close of the
year 1907 only twenty-one British covenanted civil servants and only
twelve British police officers. And while Eastern Bengal was so
scantily manned, the whole of the Lower Provinces needed a larger
administrative staff, more liberal financing and the attention of more
than one provincial administration. Thus the first partition of the old
Lower Provinces came about. For reasons with which this chapter is
not concerned, it was intensely unpopular with congress politicians
and the leaders of the Hindu bhadralok. A boycott of European goods
was proclaimed ; schoolboys and students were enlisted in picketing
operations. Within the years 1906-9 no less than 557 resultant dis-
turbances came before the criminal courts of the new province of
Eastern Bengal and Assam, and in most of these disturbances school-
boys and students were concerned. But the worst was yet to come.
Young men belonging to the English-educated classes had for some
time been engaged in revolutionary conspiracy, and armed with
bombs and pistols commenced subterranean intermittent warfare
against the government and society, organising gangs for the per-
petration of "political" dacoities, the proceeds of which went to
* Cf. chap, xvii, infra.
TERRORISM 253
finance their campaign. The terrorism which they were soon able to
exercise showed that the character of the village people had altered
little since the far-away days of the first Lord Minto. The principal
theatre of their operations was Eastern Bengal ; and the government
of that province was long unable to obtain sympathetic recognition
of its needs from higher authority.^ As late even as 18 May, 1908,
the chief secretary of Eastern Bengal and Assam addressed the
Government of India in the following terms :
Every branch of education, every department of administration, makes urgent
demands upon the revenues of this ill-equipped province ; and the normal income
barely suffices to meet the necessary items of expenditure.^
The situation grew worse and at last forced recognition from Simla
and Whitehall. Adequate legislation was undertaken; the police
were strengthened materially in Eastern Bengal; the number of
British officers was increased, and schemes for administrative and
educational reforms were under discussion when the sudden alteration
of the partition in December, 191 1, remanded all such plans for
further consideration in altered circumstances. Bengal became one
province again but was still plagued by revolutionary crime. At last
on 23 October, 191 3, the central government appointed a committee
consisting of five experienced executive officers (one from Bihar and
Orissa, one from the United Provinces, one from the Central Pro-
vinces, and two from Bengal) to examine the conditions prevailing
in the districts of Bengal; to compare them with those existing in other
provinces ; and to report in what respect the administrative machinery
could be improved,
whether by the reduction of inordinately large districts, by the creation of new
subordinate agencies or otherwise, with the object of bringing the executive officers
of government into closer touch with the people.
After extensive touring in Bengal and neighbouring provinces, the
committee submitted their conclusions in a detailed report. They
found that for some years a succession of revolutionary outrages had
obstructed and unsteadied the administration of certain districts; that
terrorism had been rampant; that Bengal district officers were, from
causes beyond their control, somewhat out of touch with the people.
"A district officer", they wrote, "or a police superintendent who is over-worked
and borne down by a load of office and inspection duties, cannot be reasonably
expected either to become well acquainted with the people of his district or to
exercise over his subordinates that watchful and sympathetic control that is essential
to good administration. Still less can he be expected to devise or ascertain how
progress is attainable. Such matters require careful and deliberate reflection and
for this there is no time. The subordinate staff suffer with him, and it is idle to
expect officers overburdened by routine work to spare time for tours or interviews
with people whom they are not obliged to see. Their days are entirely occupied
with endeavouring to keep pace with those duties which they must perform."^
' Report of the Bengal District Administration Committee, 191 3-1 4, chap. ii.
^ Idem, p. 17. 3 j(fgf„^ p 18.
254 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL
The committee proposed the following remedies :
(a) partitions or rearrangements of certain districts or subdivisions ;
(b) development of a village watch-and-ward and self-government
organisation by means of "union panchayats" under the control of
circle officers who would be subordinate to the subdivisional magis-
trates and would in some degree fill the place of the subordinate
tahsil agencies in neighbouring provinces;
{c) reforms in connection with the management of Anglo-
vernacular schools ;
(d) measures calculated to promote industrial development;
(e) the appointment of more European deputy directors of agricul-
ture for demonstration work.
The report was published by the Bengal Government in 19 15. The
war was then in progress and money was needed in new directions.
Effective measures were taken under the Defence of India Act to
suppress revolutionary conspiracy; but in all other respects reform
was tarrying in Bengal in November, 1918.
In no province had the difficulties of district officers been so
harassing. The causes lay partly in the careless neglect with which,
as we have seen, the province was treated in the far-away past under
the vague impression that because its population contained no martial
element its problems could wait. In later times Bengal district officers
were also called on to suffer for short-sighted economy in high quarters
and for an obstinate reluctance there to face facts which they never
failed faithfully to represent.^
^ Chirol, Indian Unrest y pp. 96, 315; Morley, Recollections, ii, 212, 312; Bengal District
Administration Committee Report (19 14), p. 17.
CHAPTER XIV
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
1858-1918
X N Bombay, as in other provinces, the main features of the adminis-
trative machinery had stood the test of time, and its practical working
had become stereotyped. The history of the second half of the nine-
teenth century is, therefore, in the main concerned with the improve-
ment of the administrative organisation bequeathed by the Company
and its adaptation to the rapid intellectual and material advancement
of the people of Western India. Until very recent times the Bombay
Government maintained and conducted relations with a host of petty
Bhil, Rajput and other chiefs too insignificant to be dealt with directly
by the Government of India. The officials charged with the duty of
arranging terms with the Indian princes and land-holders in the earlier
years of the nineteenth century had been persuaded to treat the de
facto exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction by a land-holder as an
indication of quasi-sovereign status. The political agents, who were
ultimately enrolled in a separate political cadre7were from the begin-
ning chosen generally from among the officers of the Company's
military forces, except in the case of small isolated states contiguous
to British districts, when the collector of the district was appointed
ex officio political agent of the state concerned. By the opening of the
period under review the system had become firmly established, the
functions of the agent varying from the mere giving of advice and
exercise of general surveillance to an actual share in the administra-
tion of the state.
In the case of the peninsula of Kathiawar, which comprised no less
than 193 separate states, the Bombay Government in 1831 established
a criminal court, presided over by the political agent, to assist the
durbars of the several states in the trial of serious crimes; but subject
to this innovation, their interference with the judicial administration
of the peninsula was restricted up to 1863 merely to diplomatic
representation. By the latter date, however, the criminal jurisdiction
of all the chiefs had been defined and classified, and each of the four
divisions {prant), into which the peninsula was formed for adminis-
trative purposes, was placed in charge of an assistant to the political
agent, empowered to exercise residuary jurisdiction with wide civil
and criminal powers. Later years witnessed further developments,
such as the appointment of a deputy to each of the four assistant
political agents, stationed at the headquarters of each prant and
exercising subordinate civil and criminal jurisdiction; the alteration
in 1903 of the designation of the political agent and his four assistants
256 DISTRICT ADMINISTIL\TION IN BOMBAY
to those of agent to the governor and political agents of the prants
respectively; the appointment of a member of the covenanted civil
service as judicial assistant to the agent to the governor, in order to
assist him in the disposal of grave criminal cases, remitted to his court
from the prants, and of civil and criminal appeals ; and the appoint-
ment as ex officio assistant political agent of a superintendent of
managed estates. The agent to the governor was also placed in control
of a small police force for watch-and-ward duty in the various thanas
and civil stations of the agency ; but outside that area it has always
been customary to hold the chiefs and land-holders responsible for the
preservation of order and for indemnifying losses due to crime within
the limits of their respective territories.
The task of administering the border states of Gujarat and Raj-
putana, which contain large numbers of wild tribes, was for many
years one of great difficulty — so much so, indeed, that in 1 838 the
Bombay Government established a system of border panchayats, with
the object of exercising a check upon continual border raids and of
providing a tribunal of speedy justice for these primitive tribesmen.
The experiment proved so successful that in 1876 these panchayats
were converted into regular courts under two British officers, one of
whom represents the Rajputana state and the other the Bombay state
concerned. These courts still exist and meet as occasion demands.^
Another department of the administration which was established
during the Company's regime and continued to function for several
years after its demise was that of the survey settlement. The settlement
of the revenue demand from each occupant of landlinder the ryotwari
system was a necessary consequence of the political pacification of the
country and of the increase of cultivation and internal trade thereby
engendered. The ryotwari system had existed in Bombay and Madras
from ancient times, but the accounts relating to it had either been lost
or fallen into confusion during the later years of Indian rule. After
the first few years' administration, therefore, the Bombay Govern-
ment organised a Survey Department, which, after measuring and
mapping every holding, proceeded to classify the fields according to
depth and quality of soil, situation, and natural defects, placing each
field in a class corresponding to a certain *'anna valuation" or
fractional share of the maximum rate calculated in sixteenths. Sub-
sequently villages were grouped into blocks on the basis of their
propinquity to markets and high roads and other economic condi-
tions, the maximum rates for each block being fixed in relation to
these conditions and to average prices. The survey department, which
was established in 1835, imposed at the outset assessments which were
too high and caused much distress. They were therefore reduced, and
a further enquiry was set on foot, which resulted in the formulation
by the department in 1847 of the principles which still form the basis
^ Imperial GazetUer, Provincial volume i, Bombay, pp. 86-8.
LAND-REVENUE 257
of the Bombay land-revenue system. Incidentally the operations of
the department brought to light many cases of land held rent free
without authority, which were subsequently investigated and adjusted
by an Inam Commission appointed in 1852. The settlement of the
presidency was completed in 1882, except in the districts of North
Kanara and Ratnagiri, which were completed in 1891 and 1893
respectively, and the special survey department was then abolished,
the future revisions of the settlement, which take place every thirty
years, being entrusted to the assistant or deputy-collector in charge
of the subdivision of a district.
The arrangements in Sind were different, owing to the fact that
the ryotwari tenure in that region was less common than the zamin-
dari, under which the land-holder (zamindar) supplied seed, plough,
cattle and labour, divided the crop with the actual cultivator, and
paid the assessment in kind out of his share of the crop, after deducting
the value of the seed advanced. For several years after the annexation
of the province, the revenue was collected in kind, as previously
remarked; but during the governorship of Sir Bartle Frere (1862-7)
cash payments were everywhere introduced, and a regular survey was
commenced in 1863. The operations of the survey department and
the progress of irrigation resulted in 1882-3 i^ the province containing
three types of settlement — the original, the revised, and the irriga-
tional, and of these the last-named, which bases the assessment of land
on the method of irrigation adopted, was eventually (1902-3) applied
to the whole province.
In order to avoid the huge volume of detail involved in a survey of
the growth of the departmental administration of Bombay since 1858,
it seems advisable to give a succinct account of the main features of
the Bombay administration, as it existed in the year 19 14. The out-
break of war in that year involved a variety of new burdens in the
sphere of daily administration, which were successfully shouldered
until the close of military operations ; and the general results of the
armistice had hardly had time to make themselves felt, before the
whole problem of administration was subjected to revision in con-
nection with the publication and adoption by parliament of the con-
stitutional reforms associated with the names of Mr E. S. Montagu
and Lord Chelmsford.
In 1 9 14, then, the Bombay government consisted of a governor,
appointed under the Government of India Act of 1833, and three
ordinary members of the council appointed under the Indian Councils
Act of 1909. Of the ordinary members two had to be persons who at
the date of their appointment had been in the service of the crown in
India for at least twelve years. In accordance with the spirit and
letter of the Morley-Minto reforms, which underlay the act of 1909
(9 Edw. VII), the appointment of third ordinary member was given
to an Indian.
CHIVI 17
258 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
In order to diminish the pressure of business, advantage was taken,
in the discharge of the executive and judicial functions, of the special
requirements of the different members of the government. The
governor himself, for example, might dispose of the business of the
poHtical department (except civil, criminal and poHtical cases), of the
public works department (except railways) , of the general department,
relating to volunteers, cantonment and miscellaneous military matters,
and of the legal department, regarding matters pertaining to the
legislative council. The responsibility for the efficient administration
of revenue, financial and railway affairs was usually accepted by the
revenue member; while the work of the judicial department, in which
were included all questions concerning the urban and district police,
the work of the educational, marine and ecclesiastical departments,
and the remaining business of the political department and of the
general department — the latter including the important subjects of
local self-government and public health — would be usually divided
between the other two ordinary members of council. Questions which
presented no special difficulty were disposed of by the members in
charge of the department in which they occurred; on more important
questions and in cases involving heavy expenditure, the opinion of a
second member was sought; and if there were any difference of
opinion, or if any case of peculiar difficulty or general public interest
arose, the matter was settled according to the balance of opinion either
as recorded by the different members or after discussion at the meeting
of the executive council. Ordinarily the opinion of the majority was
decisive at such meetings of the council. But in the case of an equality
of votes on any question the governor or other person presiding had
two votes or the casting vote. In any grave political emergency,
however, affecting the safety or tranquillity of British rule, the governor
was empowered under section 47 of the East India Company Act of
1 793, which had never been repealed, to set aside even the unanimous
opinion of his councillors, his orders in such cases having the validity
of orders passed by the whole council.
All papers connected with public business reached government
through the secretariat, where they were properly arranged and sub-
mitted to the members in charge of the departments to which they
belonged, together with all available material for forming a decision
in the shape of former correspondence, acts, or resolutions relating to
the subject, and also with the recorded opinions of the secretary or
under-secretary of the departments concerned, or of both. The
secretariat was composed as follows: for the revenue and financial
departments a secretary and an under-secretary who were covenanted
civilians, and two assistant secretaries belonging to the uncovenanted
service ; for the political, judicial and special departments a covenanted
secretary and an under-secretary and two uncovenanted assistant
secretaries; for the general, educational, marine and ecclesiastical
JUDICIAL ORGANISATION 259
departments a secretary who was a covenanted civilian, and an un-
covenanted assistant secretary ; for the legal department a covenanted
secretary who was also remembrancer of legal affairs, a covenanted
assistant remembrancer of legal affairs who was also ex officio secretary
to the legislative council, and an assistant secretary who was chosen
from the subordinate judges of the province; and for the public works
department (which included a railway branch) a secretary, a joint
secretary, and two under-secretaries, who were either royal or civil
engineers, and two uncovenanted assistant secretaries. The senior of
the three covenanted civilian secretaries to government was styled the
chief secretary. There was also a separate department in charge of the
chief secretary, assisted by the senior of the civilian under-secretaries.
Reference has already been made to the relations between the
Bombay government and the Indian states of the province. Up to
the date of the constitutional changes involved in the passing of the
Government of India Act of 1 919 all the Indian states in the Bombay
Presidency were under the supervision of the Bombay government,
with the exception of Baroda, where the resident political officer was,
and is still, an agent to the governor-general.
Under letters patent of 1865, the administration of justice through-
out the regulation districts of the presidency was, and still remains,
entrusted to the high court, consisting of a chief justice and seven
puisne judges. This court possesses both ordinary and extraordinary
civil and criminal jurisdiction, and exercises original and appellate
functions. The appellate judges of the high court also supervise the
administration of justice by the different civil and criminal courts of
the regulation districts. Ordinary original jurisdiction is exercised in
both civil and criminal matters arising within the limits of the city
and island of Bombay. By virtue of its extraordinary jurisdiction the
high court may remove and itself try any civil suit brought in any
court under its superintendence, and may in criminal cases exercise
jurisdiction over all persons residing in places within the jurisdiction
of any court subject to the superintendence of the high court. Besides
acting as an appeal court in civil and criminal matters, the high court
also functions as an insolvency court and possesses the civil and
criminal jurisdiction of an admiralty and vice-admiralty court in
prize cases and other maritime questions arising in India. It has also
been invested with testamentary jurisdiction, and has matrimonial
jurisdiction over Christians. One of the judges of the high court
officiates as judge of the Parsi matrimonial court; while matrimonial
decrees by district courts require confirmation by the high court.
The high court has no jurisdiction over the province of Sind except
in respect of its powers under the Administrator-General's Act of
1874, of probates and administrations, of decrees in matrimonial
cases, and in respect of European British subjects. All the functions
of a high court are performed by the court of the judicial commissioner,
17-2
26o DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
which replaced the former sadr court in 1906. A separate judicial
commissioner for Sind was first appointed in 1866. By the commence-
ment of the twentieth century the judicial work of the province had
so greatly increased that the court was enlarged to consist of the
judicial commissioner and two assistant judicial commissioners, one
of whom must be a barrister of at least five years' standing and be
qualified to deal with mercantile cases. The court serves also as a
district and sessions court for the Karachi district and as a colonial
court of admiralty.
In addition to the high court of Bombay and the court of the
judicial commissioner in Sind, four grades of courts administer civil
justice throughout the presidency, namely, those of district and
assistant judges and of first and second class subordinate judges. These
subordinate judges date from the year 1868-9, when the old titles of
sadr amin and munsiffwere abolished, and when at the same time the
number and limits of the judicial zillahs or districts were altered, the
appointment of judgeships and assistant judgeships were divided into
grades, and a thorough redistribution of the subordinate courts took
place, in order that the boundaries of their jurisdiction might corre-
spond as far as possible with the talukas or revenue subdivisions of the
presidency. In 19 14 the cadre of the district judicial department
included seventeen judges, three joint judges, and seven assistant
judges, all these officers being members of the Indian civil service
except three district and three assistant judges, who belonged to the
Bombay provincial service. The first and second class subordinate
judges numbered respectively seventeen and eighty-nine. The regular
judicial staff' was also entrusted with the work performed originally by
a separate staff" of three judges (a special judge and two subordinate
judges) under the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act of 1879, which
was passed after the severe famine of 1876-8. Of the total staff* of
subordinate judges four were employed exclusively in assisting the
district judges in the inspection of the subordinate courts in their
respective districts and in reporting on the working of the act above-
mentioned. As regards the district judges, it may be remarked that
those at Surat and Poona served also as judges of the Parsi matri-
monial courts in those towns; while the judge of Poona, as "Agent for
the Sardars in the Deccan", decided under Regulation xxix of 1827
cases in which certain gentlemen of high rank are interested. For the
easy recovery of small debts and demands, small cause courts, invested
with summary powers, existed in Bombay and in six smaller towns,
Ahmadabad, Nadiad, Poona, Surat, Broach and Karachi. The Deccan
Agriculturists' Relief Act of 1879 was also responsible for the creation
of appointments of village munsiffs and "conciliators", of whom the
former are empowered within the area of one or more villages to
dispose of petty suits up to Rs. 10 in value, and the latter endeavour
to induce parties to agree to a compromise of matters in dispute or to
DISTRICT OFFICIALS 261
a reference to arbitration. Other civil courts are those of the canton-
ment magistrates, who in 1910 were empowered, as occasion might
demand, to dispose of suits within a Hmit of Rs. 500, while in 1906
mamlatdars were given jurisdiction in suits regarding the immediate
possession of immovable property.
The judicial arrangements outlined above did not apply to the
scheduled districts, which may be defined as " those which have never
been brought within, or have from time to time been removed from,
the operation of the general acts and regulations and the jurisdiction
of the ordinary courts of judicature". Excluding the Panch Mahals
district, which was not included in the regulation districts until 1885,
the scheduled districts included Sind, where the judicial system is
almost identical with that of the rest of the presidency; Aden and its
dependencies, in which the resident had rather more extensive powers
than a district and sessions judge, and his assistants were usually vested
with inferior civil and criminal jurisdiction; and lastly the villages of
the Mewasi chiefs, over which the collector of the West Khandesh
district, as ex officio political agent, exercised both civil and crimxinal
jurisdiction, subject to appeal to and revision by the high court.
The revenue administration of the Bombay Presidency was carried
out by the following superior staff in 19 14: four revenue commis-
sioners, including the commissioner of customs, opium, salt and abkari;
eleven senior and ten junior collectors, including the collector of salt
revenue and the collector of Bombay; seventeen first and eighteen
second assistant collectors, some of whom were serving in the judicial
branch and some were on special duty in Sind; sixty-one deputy-
collectors, including the personal assistant to the director of agricul-
ture, who were divided into six grades and were in charge of district
treasuries or divisions of districts. In Sind, under the commissioner,
the revenue administration was carried on by four collectors, two
deputy-commissioners, six assistant collectors, and twenty-two deputy-
collectors.
The ordinary collectorate (or district), which has not altered
appreciably since the beginning of the present century, is composed
of twelve talukas or subdivisions, each of which contains about a
hundred government villages, i.e. villages which have not been
alienated and the total revenues of which belong to the state. Each
village has its regular complement of officers, who are usually here-
ditary, namely the patel^ the kulkarni or talati^ the mhar and the watch-
man. The position and duties of these village officials, as well as of the
other hereditary village servants, have already been explained in an
earlier chapter. The revenue accounts of a village, which are simple
and complete, are based upon the survey register. Every occupant is
provided with a separate receipt book in which the total amount of
his holding is entered, and the patel and kulkarni are bound, under
heavy penalties, to record in it the sums he has paid. Every year what
262 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
is termed the jamabandi of the village is made, which determines the
total amount of revenue due from the village. This process brings the
assistant or deputy-collector into annual contact with each village in
his charge and enables him to acquaint himself with its wants and
requirements; it enables the returns of cultivation and other registers,
useful for statistical purposes, to be checked ; and it affords an oppor-
tunity of examining the village accounts, verifying transfers of land,
and generally of making such a scrutiny as will protect the individual
cultivator from fraud.
Each taluka or subdivision of a coUectorate is in charge of a mam-
latdar, whose duties have considerably increased since the first quarter
of the nineteenth century. He is responsible for the treasury business
of his taluka, and for seeing that instalments of revenue are punctually
paid by the villages, that the village accounts are accurately kept, that
the cultivators' payments are duly receipted, that the boundary-
marks of the fields are in repair, and generally that the village officers
are performing their duties properly. He functions as a subordinate
magistrate and has also to supervise the administration of the local
funds. With a view to giving him some assistance, a certain number of
villages are placed under the supervision of circle inspectors and other
members of the mamlatdafs official establishment; but he is expected to
assure himself by personal examination that they are doing their work.
Above the mamlatdar is the assistant or deputy-collector who is in
charge of, on an average, three talukas, and is expected to travel about
his charge throughout the seven fair-weather months of the year. He
has to satisfy himself by direct personal inspection that the revenue
work is regularly carried out; he sees that the revenue of each village
is brought to account at the time of the annual jamabandi; he
nominates the village officers; enquires into the needs of his talukas in
respect of local roads, wells, planting of trees and so forth ; he hears
appeals from the orders of the mamlatdars ; corresponds with them on
matters concerned with the administration of their respective talukas,
and generally supervises their proceedings.
Above the assistant and deputy-collectors is the collector and magis-
trate, who is in charge of the whole district. He has to travel through
his charge during four months of the year, and besides superintending
the revenues and magisterial work of his district he has to administer
the excise and other special taxes and to supervise the stamp revenue.
He is also ex officio district registrar and visitor of the district jail, and
has important duties to perform in connection with municipalities and
local funds, with the Land Acquisition Act (I of 1894), and with forests.
On all questions of executive administration his opinion is invariably
required.
Finally general superintendence and control over the revenue ad-
ministration are exercised by the three revenue commissioners (for
the northern, central and southern divisions of the presidency) and
the commissioner in Sind. During the fair season these officers are
PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT 263
constantly moving about their divisions; judging for themselves of the
requirements of the various parts of the country, of the manner in
which the revenue administration and that of police are being carried on,
and of the qualifications of the district officials. They entertain appeals
from the collector's decisions and are the channel of communication
between them and the government. ^ Speaking broadly, it may be
said that, except for a general increase of business resulting from the
progress of the presidency, for a few changes such as the introduction
of local self-government in the form of partly elective local boards,
and for administrative readjustments such as the creation of a third
revenue division, the general system of revenue administration in
force in 19 14, and also at the present date, is practically the same as at
the date of the assumption of the government of India by the crown.
The main features of the system can be traced back directly to the
arrangements initiated by Elphinstone for the settlement of the
Deccan and other territories taken from the Peshwa, and indirectly
and with certain marked differences, mainly due to the differences in
land tenures, to the arrangements in Bengal.
During the period succeeding the year 1858 the administration and
expansion of the chief ports of the territories controlled by the Bombay
government were provided for by the establishment of the Bombay
Port Trust in 1873, of the Karachi Port Trust in 1880, and of the Aden
Port Trust in 1889. The plague which broke out in 1896 was directly
responsible for the creation of the City Improvement Trust in 1898 —
a body composed of members partly elected and partly nominated,
which was charged with the duty of preparing a comprehensive
scheme of improvement for Bombay, with particular reference to the
better ventilation of densely crowded areas, the removal of insanitary
dwellings, and the prevention of overcrowding. The act legalising the
establishment of this trust provided for the nomination by the Bombay
Government of three of the trustees, including the chairman, and for
the appointment, as trustees ex officio, of the collector of Bombay, the
municipal commissioner, and the general officer commanding the
Bombay district.
The public works department was gradually organised after the
transfer of control to the crown, on the foundations laid by Lord
Dalhousie for the whole of India in 1854. A considerable addition
was made to the department in 1868-9, ^^^ by the year 1914 the
establishment, including the railway branch, consisted of two chief
engineers, the senior of whom was the secretary to government and
the junior the joint secretary to government, six superintending en-
gineers, including a sanitary engineer, thirty-eight executive engineers,
and fifty-nine assistant engineers. The growth of official buildings and
the introduction of electric power had also necessitated the appoint-
ments of a consulting architect, an architectural draughtsman,
and an electrical engineer, all of whom were employed on five years'
^ Report on Administration of Bombay Presidency ^ 191 1 -12.
264 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
agreements, as well as an electrical inspector and ten temporary
engineers.
Like the public works department, the administration of the forests
of the presidency originated in the definite and prudent policy
enunciated by Lord Dalhousie in 1855, and was gradually evolved
subsequent to the year i860. The great famine of 1876-8 led to a
revision of the provincial arrangements for forest conservancy, and
to the introduction of legislative measures which placed the whole
system of forest administration in Bombay on a secure and well-
defined basis. For administrative purposes the presidency was divided
into four forest circles, corresponding to the four revenue divisions,
three of which were in charge of conservators and the fourth (Sind)
in charge of a deputy-conservator. The controlling staflf was divided
into an imperial service and a provincial service, of which the former
had been reorganised in 1907 and the latter in 191 1. The imperial
service, in accordance with that revision, was composed of three con-
servators and twenty-four deputy and assistant conservators, and the
provincial service of five extra deputy-conservators and twenty-three
extra assistant conservators. Below these was the protective establish-
ment of rangers, foresters and forest guards. As forest control and
conservancy are regarded as a branch of the general administration,
the central authority in forest matters has always been the com-
missioner of the revenue division, subject to the general orders of the
Bombay Government. In all professional and technical matters the
professional forest officer has full control and responsibility; but in
regard to such matters as the rights and privileges of the people in
forests, the local supply of grass, grazing and fodder, and the general
relations of the department with the people, control is vested in the
collectors of the districts, to whom for these purposes the forest officers
are subordinate. A comprehensive survey of the forests was com-
menced in 1 888, and the work of forest settiement was completed
before the close of the period dealt with in this review. The classifica-
tion of the forests also into forest proper, fuel and fodder reserves, and
pastures was completed throughout the presidency before the year
1 91 4, though a working plans division is still maintained in each forest
circle for the purpose of ascertaining the productive capacity of the
forests and of preparing scientific proposals for the profitable ex-
ploitation of the sylvan resources of the presidency.
The salient features of the educational administration subsequent
to 1858 were the introduction of the grants-in-aid code in 1865,
designed for the benefit of any private primary or secondary school,
which was controlled by a board of management and was not main-
tained solely for private profit; the reorganisation in 1868 of the
supply of trained schoolmasters; the foundation in 1890 of the joint
schools committee to supervise and control primary education in
Bombay city; and the amendment of the constitution of the university,
founded in 1857, which synchronised with a declaration of the educa-
AGRICULTURE 265
tional policy of the Indian Government in 1903-4. Broadly speaking,
education in the Bombay Presidency is imparted partly through direct
official agency, partly through the medium of grants-in-aid. The
Bombay Government in 191 8 maintained arts colleges in Bombay,
Poona and Gujarat, a medical college, a college of science, an agri-
cultural college, a veterinary college, a school of art, a law school and
a college of commerce, as well as a model secondary school in Bombay
and at the headquarters of each revenue district or collectorate. While
the Bombay municipality is now responsible for primary education in
the city, the majority of the primary schools throughout the presidency
are maintained by the district and taluka local boards, who receive
grants-in-aid from the government. The official staff responsible for
the educational administration consisted in 19 18 of a director, an
inspector in each of the four divisions of the presidency, and in each
district or collectorate a deputy-inspector with assistants.
The importance of agriculture as one of the chief factors in the
progress of the presidency was recognised about 1884 by the organisa-
tion of a separate department of land records and agriculture, pre-
sided over by a director chosen from the ranks of the covenanted civil
service. The activities of the department were for several years con-
fined mainly to the simplification of revenue-settlement procedure
and the improvement of the land-record system; and in connection
with the latter branch of its duties a class of circle inspectors, who were
subordinate to the mamlatdars of the talukas, was tentatively introduced
about 1887. The agricultural work of the various provinces was
eventually co-ordinated by the appointment in 1901 of an inspector-
general of agriculture with the Government of India, and the increased
attention paid to agriculture after that date led in 1 905 to the separa-
tion of the appointments of director of agriculture and director of land
records, and to the appointments of a deputy-director, an agricultural
chemist and an economic botanist for the Bombay Presidency. The
director of land records had ample work to perform in supervising the
preparation of the "record of rights'* in land, which followed on the
passing in 190 1-2 of a special Record of Rights Act as a complement
to existing legislation governing the Bombay land-revenue system.
A further attempt to advance the welfare of the agricultural worker
and improve rural credit was made in 1904 by the passing of the
Co-operative Credit Societies Act by the legislative council of the
Government of India. In Bombay the task of organising and super-
vising such societies under the terms of the act was entrusted to a
registrar, aided by a staff of assistant registrars, auditors, and other
officers. Shortly after the close of the period with which this chapter
deals the Bombay Presidency contained 1648 agricultural credit
societies, 2 1 1 non-agricultural credit societies, twelve banks, and fifty
unions, while the capital of the agricultural and non-agricultural
societies amounted respectively to 83 J and 62 lakhs of rupees.
As regards miscellaneous departments of the administration it may
266 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY
be mentioned that the control of excise was vested at the close of 1 918
in the collectors of the districts, subject to the general control of the
commissioner of customs, salt, opium and abkari (excise). They were
assisted in this branch of their duties by a special staff of assistants,
inspectors, sub-inspectors, gangers, clerks, petty officers and menials.
The salt department of the presidency proper was separately adminis-
tered by the commissioner of customs and a special staff, while there
were separate establishments for Sind and Aden, which were con-
trolled respectively by the commissioner in Sind and the political
resident. The customs administration of the port of Bombay was
managed by a collector of customs and six assistants, and of the port of
Karachi by a collector and two assistants, subject respectively to the
general control of the commissioner of customs, Bombay, and the
commissioner in Sind. The collector of land-revenue in Bombay,
assisted by four inspectors of factories, was responsible for the adminis-
tration of the Cotton Duties Act II of 1896.
Excluding the military administration, railways, public works, etc.,
and special trusts created for developing ports and urban areas, it may
be broadly stated that the various administrative appointments and
establishments created between 1858 and 191 8, in response to the
progress and requirements of the people of the presidency, were grafted
upon, added to, or linked more or less closely for administrative pur-
poses with the framework of the revenue organisation, which had been
constructed, tested and improved during the first half of the nine-
teenth century. The most important part of that framework was the
district officer, who as collector was responsible for the revenue ad-
ministration, and as magistrate supervised the inferior courts and
directed the work of the police. The revenue organisation, while it has
always served, and still serves "its peculiar purpose of collecting the
revenue and keeping the peace", is, in the words of the Montagu-
Chelmsford Report,
so close-knit, so well established, and so thoroughly understood by the people, that
it simultaneously discharges easily and efficiently an immense number of other
duties. It deals with the registration, alteration, and partition of holdings; the
settlement of disputes; the management of indebted estates; loans to agriculturists;
and above all, famine relief. Because it controls revenue, which depends on agri-
culture, the supreme interest of the people, it naturally serves as the general adminis-
tration staff.
Specialised services, such as the establishments for irrigation, roads
and buildings, agriculture, industries, factories, and co-operative
credit, may possess separate staffs which are under the control of their
own departmental heads. But, "in varying degrees, the district
officer influences the policy in all these matters, and he is always there
in the background to lend his support, or, if need be, to mediate
between a specialised service and the people".^
' Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms , 191 8, pp. 102, 103.
CHAPTER XV
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
1858-1918
X HE storm of the Mutiny raised only a couple of ripples in Madras.
A hill-chief of Godavari, marching upon a private quarrel, proclaimed
himself a forerunner of Nana Sahib, and strove to raise the country,
but paid for the boast with his life. Between a dismissed tahsildar of
Bellary and malcontents in Dharwar a plot was hatched to bring
about a general rising. The rebels got possession of the fort of Kopal,
but the place was stormed with heavy loss to the defenders and of the
survivors seventy-seven were executed.
The transfer of the government of India to the crown caused no stir
whatever. The local annals are silent on the subject because methods
and principles remained unchanged.
Only a few events disturbed a period of general serenity. On
I November, 1864, at Masulipatam, torrential rain preceded early
darkness and a devastating wind. Towards midnight, at a cry "The
sea is coming". Captain Hasted looked from his half- wrecked house
on a "wild waste of luridly phosphorescent water, not in waves, but
swirling, boiling, pouring round the house and lifted against it and
over it in sheets by the raging wind". In a mass 13 feet above high-
water mark, the Bay of Bengal had poured itself on the land. At
midnight, with indescribable din and immeasurable fury, the waters
rushed back. They had penetrated 17 miles inland, overwhelmed
800 square miles and destroyed 30,000 people and countless cattle.
The next event was much graver. There are seventeenth-century
records of awful famines; the Guntur famine of 1833 "covered the
country with human bones from Ongole to Masulipatam" ; the Orissa
famine of 1865-6 afflicted a quarter of the presidency; but it may be
doubted whether the tragedy of 1876-8 did not surpass all previous
calamities of the sort. Of the 200,000 square miles affected more
than a third fell within Madras, where the famine is charged with
causing the death of nearly four million people and cost the state over
800 lakhs. The material loss to the community at large was incal-
culable and was made good only to a trifling extent from the huge
Mansion House Fund, though most of that fund was laid out in the
Madras Presidency. The calamity left its trace on the agricultural
statistics for twenty-five years, and the population which had been
advancing up to 1871 at the rate of about half a million a year showed
no increase for the decennium ending with 1881 . The government has
never ignored its duty towards the starving, though the succour given
has not always been adequate or timely. Public relief, which dates back
268 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
to the eighteenth century, has taken various forms: importation
of grain through official agency; bounties, advances and guarantees
of price to private traders ; opening of pubHc works ; gratuitous dis-
tribution of food, cooked or uncooked. The great famine led to the
preparation of a famine code which centres all famine operations in
the collector and requires the maintenance for each district of a pro-
gramme of the public works ready to be put into immediate operation.
As a further preparation for sudden emergencies a scheme was intro-
duced in 1907 for forming provincial famine funds by an annual
credit of 2 J lakhs up to a maximum of 25 lakhs, and mention should
be made here of the protective irrigation works on the Rushikulya
river, which, completed about 1898, serves to afford some security to
Ganjam, a region of frequent dearth.
The Moplah sore was still festering in Malabar where outbreaks
occurred in 1873 and 1880. A second special enquiry was made into
the cause of these troubles and, as they were now ascribed in the main
to the eviction of tenants, a law^ was peissed to ensure compensation
for improvements to dispossessed tenants. Five outrages in the years
1883 to 1885 emphasised the urgent need for action and four taluks
were disarmed as completely as possible. A serious rising in 1894 was
the starting-point for remedial measures in the form of roads to open
up the fanatical zone, and of special, but not very successful, arrange-
ments for the education of Moplah children. Before these could come
into operation the outbreak of 1 896 occurred. After the usual pillaging,
maltreatment and murdering of Hindus, the rebels took stand in a
temple sanctified to them by the slaughter of 1 849, and there met the
death they courted and merited. The temple was heaped with corpses
and streaming with blood, the survivors slitting the throats of the
wounded as they fell to prevent their capture alive. In all out of
ninety-nine men, ninety-six were killed. The three left alive could not
find any material grievance to plead.
Off the coast of Malabar lies the southern group of the Laccadive
Islands. Ever since the annexation of Malabar the misgovernment of
the islands by the family of the Bibi of Gannanore to which they
belonged had been a cause of trouble, and they had been taken over
once but restored on promise of amendment. In 1 875 it was found
necessary to sequestrate them in perpetuity to protect the islanders
fi-om oppression. There was still no setded peace in the Northern
Gircars. In 1865 the Khonds of the Ganjam hills rose, this time
against the Uriya and Pano inhabitants, of whom they murdered
many. It was thought necessary after this to arrange for the more or
less permanent residence in the hills of European officers to prevent
the exploitation and oppression of the Khonds by other classes.
A more serious affair was the Rampa rebellion in the hills of
Godavari. The trouble there began in 1835 on the death of the
^ Act I of 1887; replaced by Act I of 1900.
THE AGENCY TRACTS 269
mansabdar charged with the maintenance of order, the muttahdars, or
sub-chiefs, objecting to the arrangements for the succession. The
quarrel was patched up in 1848, but the mansabdar then appointed
entered upon a long course of oppressive acts for which he pleaded
the authority of government. The police, too, were making themselves
offensive to the muttahdars and the cup overflowed when the govern-
ment forbade the free drawing of toddy and leased the toddy ^revenue
to renters who demanded fees for tapping. After an initiatory sacrifice
of several police constables and other obnoxious persons had been made
to the gods, insurrection blazed out in 1879 over 5000 square miles. A
guerrilla war followed ; isolated stations were attacked, villages looted
and burnt, detachments of police and even troops forced to retreat, many
money-lenders murdered. A large military force was assembled and
in the following year the affair was over; the mansabdar was deposed
and arrangements were come to with the muttahdars as to their tenure
and duties. This outbreak led to a change in the administration of the
hills of Godavari. They were withdrawn from the operation of the
ordinary laws and placed entirely under the collector of Godavari, as
government agent, in whom was vested both civil and criminal juris-
diction. In short, these hills were put in practically the same position
as those of Ganjam and Vizagapatam, though by means of a different
enactment.^ Much later on steps were taken to protect the hillmen
of these three tracts from the money-lenders by a law ^ checking the
transfer of land in execution of decrees to persons not belonging to
the hill tribes.
In the centre things went quietly except at Salem, where the resent-
ment of Hindus over the building of a mosque resulted in 1882 in two
riots, the demolition of the building and a rather long tale of killed
and wounded.
In the south also religious prejudices were responsible for trouble.
For a long time there had been growing hostility to the Shanars (or
toddy-drawer caste) on account of their claims to novel religious
privileges. The courts were resorted to, and an injunction obtained
forbidding the Shanars of Kalugumalai from going in procession. This
led in 1895 to a riot in which nine or ten were killed, followed by the
imposition of punitive police on the locality. Four years later a
Marava zamindar sued to restrain Shanars from entering the temple
at Sivakasi. The Shanars retorted by burning many Marava dwellings.
The Maravars thereon mustered in great force and attacked the
enemy. Twenty-five persons were killed and there was much destruc-
tion of Shanars' property. The Marava gangs were rounded up by se-
poys and police and a punitive police was quartered on that locality too.
The disturbances of the nineteenth century were due to religious
quarrels or to local or personal causes, not involving, except in 1857,
any direct challenge to the state. With the exception of sporadic
1 The India Scheduled Districts Act, 1874. ^ Act I of 1917.
270 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
disorder due to efforts to prevent the spreading of plague and of an
outbreak against the police at Guntur, the troubles of the twentieth
century were the outcome of an organised movement against foreign
domination, propagated by the more educated classes and so, in the
main, by Brahmans, and finding its principal source in Bengal. The
unrest had its first overt expression in 1906 among the students at
Rajahmundry; its next, soon afterwards, at Gocanada in a raid on
the English club provoked by a trivial incident. Then, in 1908, a
commercial failure at Tuticorin was worked up as an instance of the
malignity of the rulers ; there were strikes, and Europeans were boy-
cotted. Proceedings were taken against the instigators in the criminal
courts with the result that there were simultaneous outbreaks at
Tinnevelly and Tuticorin. A good deal of damage was done and the
police had to resort to fire-arms. Three years later a seditious con-
spiracy found vent in the murder of the collector of Tinnevelly. The
war did not improve the situation, although the rural areas remained
generally unaffected. Of the war itself the country saw nothing
except in the form of some shells from the Emden which caused three
deaths and some injury to property in Madras, and suffered therefrom
mainly through the check on sea-borne trade. The attitude of the
Indian press towards the war called for little criticism, but political
agitation grew in extent and bitterness. By 191 8 three distinct
political movements had become manifest; the earlier agitation of the
Home Rule party, their later action culminating in the formation of
the Madras Presidency Association, and a Labour campaign with, on
the other side, a growing opposition to Brahman influence on the part
of educated members of other castes.
The legislation of 186 1 created ^ a high court which absorbed the
supreme court and courts of sadr and faujdari adalat, thus becoming
a court of appeal, reference and revision for the whole presidency.
The passing of the Penal and Criminal Procedure Codes ^ also led
to important changes : the Muhammadan criminal law disappeared,
criminal jurisdiction became a subject of general legislation and the
ordinary minor civil courts ceased to operate as criminal courts.
A host of laws were repealed^ after the enactment of these two codes
and the position determined in 1873* was this: the ziUcih civil and
sessions judges became district and sessions judges with unlimited
ordinary civil jurisdiction and power to pass any authorised sentence;
the principal sadr amins became subordinate judges with civil juris-
diction similar to that of the district judge; the jurisdiction of the
district munsiffs was extended to Rs. 2500. The only subsequent change
which need be noticed is the enlargement of the powers of the village
civil courts and the establishment of village benches.^
» 24 & 25 Vic. c. 104. » India Acts XLV of i860 and XXV of 1 861.
» Act II of 1869 and India Act XVII of 1862.
« India Act III of 1873. ^ Act I of 1889.
THE SETTLEMENT DEPARTMENT 271
The new settlement department began to operate in 1857 under
a director who, in 1882, took charge of the new department of agri-
culture also. In 1887 the control of these two departments and of the
inchoate land record department was assigned to a member of the
Board of Revenue. The nature and development of "late ryotwari"
have been sufficiently indicated already; the stage had now been
reached in which "subject to the payment of a stated proportion of
the produce, . . . the proprietary right of the ryot in the soil of his
holding is absolute and complete".^ It remains only to explain how
that "stated proportion" is determined. After a preliminary investi-
gation of the general conditions of a district, the settlement officers
classify the soil under "series ", "classes " and "sorts", small differences
being ignored in order to form practically identical "blocks". The
output per acre of the particular soil is then estimated in rice or a
standard "dry" crop and this is priced on the average of a series of
years ; the price is next reduced by about 1 5 per cent, to cover carriage
to market and merchants' profits. The "commutation rate" so found
is again reduced to allow for seasonal vicissitudes and uncultivable
areas included in the fields. From the gross money value of the crop
thus determined, the cost of cultivation is subtracted and not more
than half the balance is taken as the assessment due to the state. The
rates ascertained for the various kinds of soil are graded to avoid
petty differences and, in applying them, consideration is paid to the
position of the village and the quality of the irrigation. In the end a
village settlement register is prepared. This contains particulars of
every separate holding and one of the main duties of the land record
department (which was properly constituted only in 1903) is to keep
the register corrected up to date in order to facilitate subsequent
settlements. Although the state nominally demands a sum not in
excess of half the net value of the crop, the proportion actually taken
depends, of course, in any year on the ruling price of grain. It was
roughly estimated in 1855 that the assessment then amounted to half
the gross produce on wet land and one-third on dry, but in 191 2 it
was reckoned that the government was getting less than one-tenth of
the gross produce. It is safe to say that for many years the government
has not received the authorised half rate. It may be added that, in
1 91 2, an average district contained 157,000 government ryots and
107,500 survey fields.
We may now pass under review sundry departments which attained
importance during our second period only, leading off with agriculture.
At the outset the Company was not wholly neglectful of this subject,
but its efforts were principally directed to the introduction of exotics.
With an eye to cochineal it encouraged the growth of prickly pear
(the blacker sin of introducing it is Portugal's) . Bourbon cotton was
introduced in the eighteenth century and before 1 850 there were other
^ G.O. 1008, Rev. 21 September, 1882.
272 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
earnest but unavailing attempts to improve the quality of the cotton
grown. In 1865 an experimental farm W2is started at Saidapett, and
there was some training of apprentices. Then a school of agriculture
was started at the same place, and about 1886 this was developed into
a college but the institution languished, and it was not until 1909 that
instruction in agriculture was put on a firm footing by the opening
at Goimbatore of a large agricultural college and research institute.
On the administrative side development was even more discreditably
tardy. The first step was taken in 1882 by the appointment of an
agricultural expert to advise the director of settlement, but there was
no real attempt to atone for a century's neglect until 1906, when a
trained department was instituted and at once developed into an
energetic and most important branch of the administration. It was
enlarged in 1914, and two years later the control over it was trans-
ferred from the Board of Revenue to government.
Forestry is another subject which for long received inadequate
attention. Naval demand for teak led to the appointment of a com-
missioner on the west coast in 1806, and this was followed by the
establishment of a sort of government monopoly of the timber trade;
but this gave rise to so much discontent that the system and the
commissioner were abolished in 1822.^ Malabar again received a
special officer in 1847, ^^^ some control was established over the
Anaimalai forest. Elsewhere collectors realised some revenue from
permits and leases for cutting wood and grazing. In 1856 a conserva-
tor was appointed and, three years later, a "Jungle Conservancy
Department" was organised. The forests were then divided into
"imperial" under the conservator and "jungle conservancy" under
the collectors. The jungle conservancy had a separate establishment,
derived funds from seignorage and grazing fees, and did some useful
work, mainly in the way of making plantations and avenues. At first
the conservator's establishment was not sufficient to do more than
raise a little revenue; but from 1871 trained officers began to come out
from England and were placed under the collectors to whom the
conservator acted as adviser. Not until Act V of 1882 had declared
certain acts to be offences could conservancy and not exploitation be
treated as the end principally in view, and meanwhile much harm
had been done to the forests. The forest department then became a
branch of the revenue department, the jungle conservancy depart-
ment was abolished, the trained European staff was organised into
advisory conservators and district forest officers, who ranked as
assistants to the collectors.
The formal notification of "reserved forests", which began after
the passing of Act V of 1882, was practically finished by 191 1, when
nearly 20,000 square miles had been brought under more or less strict
control. The mode of working these forests now adopted where feasible
^ Munro*s Minute, 26 November, 1822.
MUNICIPALITIES 273
is to lease them out by coupes ^ in rotation, to contractors who make their
own arrangements for removal and sale. Inevitably the department
has been very unpopular, and, in an effort to improve relations, it
was decided in 1910-11 to disafforest many small areas and to make
over certain other minor reserves to village committees for manage-
ment. Up to the end of our period this experiment was reported to
have had a measure of success.
The next subject for consideration is the local administrative bodies,
the connection of which with education is dealt with elsewhere.
In Madras town Streynsham Master's Civilian Scavenger, the
Mayor and Corporation in silken robes, and George the Third's
Justices of the Peace pass in succession across the stage, but it was
when, in 1856,^ these last handed over charge to a body of com-
missioners that the Madras Corporation started on its course. We
need not follow its progress along the lines of extension of the elective
principle, diminution of governmental control, enhancement of taxa-
tion. Outside the city the first municipal institutions were of a
voluntary character, the townspeople being left to ask for the applica-
tion to their towns of an act^ which enabled the magistrate and persons
appointed by government to raise taxes and see to the management
of the streets and the prevention of nuisances. There was no active
response to this invitation and, as townsfolk were not contribudng
fairly to the general expenses, it was resolved to compel them to pay
something towards the cost of the police. A Town Improvement Act^
was therefore passed and extended to numerous towns. This vested
control of the streets, drains and so on in the district magistrate as
president, the local public works officer and five or more persons
appointed by government, rendered compulsory the levy of specified
taxes to the point requisite to provide for certain purposes (including
75 per cent, of the cost of the town police) and authorised discretionary
taxation beyond that point for other purposes. The reluctance of the
municipal commissioners to impose taxation beyond the compulsory
limit led to a revised Towns Improvement Act.* There were now the
collector as president, the revenue divisional officer and three or more
commissioners ; provision was made for a system of election and a
limit was put on the number of officials; education and medical relief
entered into the list of purposes; liability for the police per contra
disappeared ; ^ the government got power to enforce taxation through
supervision of the annual budget. The present law^ severs the con-
nection of the collector with the district municipalities, while leaving
him a measure of control in emergencies ; the only ex officio councillor
is the revenue divisional officer ; the minimum strength of the council
is twelve; the maximum proportion of officials is one-fourth; the
1 India Act XLV. 2 India Act XXVI of 1850.
3 Act X of 1865. " Act III of 1871.
^ This liability was reimposed by Act VII of 1878, but was enforced for a few years only.
« Act IV of 1884.
CHIVI 18
274 DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS
chairman may be appointed by government or by election ; a propor-
tion (usually three-fourths) of the council must be appointed by
election;^ taxation has been increased to meet the cost of water and
drainage works.
When British rule was established, there was not a single road of
any length fit for wheeled traffic ; even the main streets of many of the
largest towns were unusable by vehicles. Wheeled traffic was limited
to rough farm carts on soHd wheels. At first there was a good deal of
mihtary road-making, but the money spent on it was mostly wasted.
Commercial roads were first considered in 1 8 1 3 ; and then there was
not a road which was not either ill-made or decayed. Bridges were
almost unknown. The inland commerce being then small, the Board
of Revenue did not ask for more than a grant to enable collectors to
keep up their district roads, and the government sanctioned 30,000
rupees a year, with a promise (never fulfilled) of more. In 1825
communications were put under the "maramat department" of the
board, the management remaining with the district officers. Such
improvement followed as was possible with a total annual allotment
of httle more than one lakh, and it was reckoned in 1 848 that about
90,000 travelling carts with "the European form of wheel" had come
into being. In 1 845 a trunk road department under a superintendent
was formed to take over the main highways from the maramat
department. The new official was provided with funds but no proper
staff, and the main roads shpped again from his paralysed hands into
thoseof the collectors, who on their part were so starved that their whole
road-grants totalled less than 10,000 rupees. In 1852 there was *' prob-
ably not a single mile throughout the presidency equal to an ordinary
English turnpike road", and there were certainly not a thousand miles
on which one could comfortably drive at six miles an hour. When a
proper public works department was created in 1858, the roads
generally were entrusted to it, but imperial funds proved inadequate and
it was resolved to find money for the minor roads from other sources.
This was at first done by an addition to the assessment on ryotwariland,
but the unfairness of such an arrangement led to Act III of 1866,
which enabled government to levy a road-cess on all occupied land,
whether ryotwari or zemindari. Then the question of providing for
education came up and it was decided to have a general measure
deaJing with rural roads, education and medical and sanitary im-
provements. The Local Fund Act (IV of 187 1) was the result. This
divided the country into circles (usually two to a district) which were
placed under the collector as president of a board with a non-official
element of half or more. The principal tax leviable under this act was
a cess of one anna in the rupee on the annual rent value of all occupied
land. With the help of contributions from this source the public works
department continued to manage the roads until 1879, when the local
^ Under the amending Act III of 1897.
FINANCE 275
fund boards started their own engineering establishments and took
complete charge. The general system of administration was revised
by the Local Boards Act (V of 1884), which has since been amended
on several occasions. The district now came under a district board
with the collector as president (though in recent years there have been
cases of non-official presidents), the revenue divisional officers as ex
officio members, and other members either appointed by government
or (from 1887) in part elected. The revenue division was placed under
a taluk board with the revenue divisional officer as president or (from
1 91 2) with an elected president. In 1909 the partial election of mem-
bers of taluk boards was introduced. In the case of both boards a
majority of non-official members is provided for and full executive
authority is vested in the presidents. The law further enables the
government to constitute villages and groups of villages into unions
under the control of panchajats or committees. A house-tax may be
raised in such unions, but the principal source of revenue is still the
tax on the rent value of land. The main objects of expenditure have
been roads, bridges, elementary schools and hospitals, in respect of
all of which, since 1871, great development has taken place, attri-
butable largely to the zeal and knowledge of the official presidents.
The current century has produced its own minor departments and
one of these promises to do much to relieve the farming class from the
burden of debts incurred at extortionate interest from the money-
lenders. The purpose of this department is to foster the growth of a
system of co-operative credit societies, and so rapid has been the
progress that in 191 7 there were in existence 2644 societies with a
working capital of 235 lakhs.
Such was the position at the end of our period : the mass peaceful
and as contented as men ever are; on the surface some commotion
crying for appeasement. The development of the administration since
1 81 8 may seem to have been disappointingly slow in some directions;
but it must be borne in mind that at the outset the presidency could
not pay its way, and that for many years the resources available were
very scanty. In 1825 Munro referred to the recurrent need of help from
Bengal, and the Madras Public Works Commission in 1852 observed
that Madras was invariably unable to provide its prescribed con-
tribution towards "home charges" and was under constant pressure
to economise. Only quite recently has the need for rigid economy
ceased to hamper the government.
18-2
CHAPTER XVI
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED
PROVINCES, CENTRAL PROVINCES, AND PANJAB
1858-1918
LJ P to 1857 the development of administration had been in the main
a process of improvisation, which responded to the varying conditions
of the territories successively acquired rather than to the a priori re-
quirements of any precisely defined system. The pacification after the
Mutiny and the assumption of direct government by the crown
inaugurated an era of reconstruction and assimilation which gradually
substituted a regime of uniform lawfor one of discretionary regulations
and diverse procedure, while preserving some measure of local ad-
justment to the varied needs of a very heterogeneous population. The
change obliterated the distinction between regulation and non-
regulation areas, while restricting in the latter the discretion and
power of the district officer ; and with improvement in communica-
tions the activities of government began to manifest themselves
through centralised departments rather than, as previously, through
the comparatively unfettered initiative of local officers. The reform
of the Indian legislature in 1861 and its subsequent activity have been
described elsewhere. Here we confine ourselves to their effects on
district administration.
The enactment in 1859 of the Civil Procedure Code and in i860
of the Indian Penal Code, followed in 1861 by that of the Criminal
Procedure Code, was among the first-fruits of the new era. ^ The last
two acts unified and simplified the criminal law, which in the three
provinces had consisted of a confused medley of Islamic precepts,
British acts and regulations, and judicial decisions. ^ The reform was
of conspicuous benefit to administration.
In 1 86 1 the first serious attempt was made to deal with the difficult
problem of police by an enactment which embodied far-reaching
reforms and which applied to all the three provinces. ^ Its principal
feature was the constitution under each local government of a separate
department of civil police, consisting of a formally enrolled homo-
geneous provincial force, on the model of the Royal Irish Constabu-
lary, distributed over the districts and placed under an inspector-
general, who was himself subject to the direct control of the local
* Whitley Stokes, The Anglo-Indian Codes, i, xii.
* Whitley Stokes, op. cit. i, 2.
' Moral and Material Progress Report, 1882-3, P- 7^; Imperial Gazetteer, iv, 387, 388;
Report of Indian Police Commission, 1903, chap, i, pp. 9-13.
POLICE ADMINISTRATION 277
government, and who was assisted by subordinate deputy-inspector-
generals. Police administration in each district was placed in the
hands of a superintendent, who was responsible for the working,
discipline, and management of the force. But in order to combine the
previous direct responsibility of the district magistrate with the intro-
duction of departmental organisation, the superintendent was made
subordinate to him in all that directly concerned the preservation of
peace and the suppression of crime. The superior officers of the force,
including the district superintendents, were Europeans. The districts
were, as before, divided into convenient areas, each in charge of an
Indian officer, of the rank of deputy-inspector, with a body of con-
stables; a reserve under an inspector being maintained at headquarters.
Village watchmen were retained, not as members of the force, though
partially placed under the control of the local police officer, but as
servants of the village communities, the headmen of which were
legally bound to assist in the prevention and detection of crime. The
powers of the police and much of their procedure were henceforth
regulated by the provisions of the criminal procedure code, a limita-
tion on previous methods, which, though desirable in itself, was
probably of advantage to the criminal ; while the improved quality
of the judiciary, combined with the growth of a legal profession, tended
to raise the standard of proof required in criminal trials. The reformed
system, though not without defects, was an improvement on its
predecessor, and it remained without drastic change for the next forty
years. Police, however, continued to be a weak point in the adminis-
tration, while the strength and qualifications of the force did not keep
pace with growing requirements and progressive conditions, nor did
it secure public confidence. In spite of some minor improvements
effected in 1888-9 ^^ enquiry made at the end of the century revealed
a considerable increase in crime of the more serious kinds. A com-
mission was appointed to investigate the whole subject of police
administration, and it reported in 1903.^ While approving the fun-
damental principles of the existing system, it criticised adversely the
manner in which they had been practically applied, as well as the
qualifications of all ranks of the force. It recommended many drastic
reforms, most of which were introduced, ^ and in a few years secured
highly beneficial results, as shown by the admirable manner in which
the modern police force has acquitted itself during recent periods of
disturbance.
Shortly after 1858 changes were made in the constitution of the
judiciary. In 1 866 a high court was established for the North-Western
Provinces under the provisions of an English statute of 1861,^ and a
^ Report of Indian Police Commission, 1903, chap. ii.
2 Government of India Resolution, 2 1 March, 1 905, on Report of Police Commission
{Pari. Papers, 1905, Ivii, Accounts, etc. c. 2478).
* Field, Regulations of the Bengal Code, 1875, p. 149; Imp. Gaz. TV, 146; Moral and Mat.
Prog. Rep. 1882-3, p. 68.
278 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., G.P., AND PANJAB
chief court with two judges for the Panjab. The constitution of the
subordinate criminal courts was now regulated by the code of criminal
procedure, the existing grades of sessions and magistrates' courts
being retained. The collector kept his magisterial powers; but in the
previously non-regulation areas, where such powers were wider, he
was gradually relieved of the disposal of the increasing volume of civil
litigation, except as regards suits between landlord and tenant; while
the criminal and civil jurisdictions of the commissioners of divisions
was transferred — in the Panjab as early as 1884^ — to divisional judges,
who corresponded to the district and sessions judges of regulation
provinces, and who in more recent years have been completely
assimilated to them both in name and functions. The Indian judiciary,
both criminal and civil, grew rapidly and for many years it has largely
predominated in all grades except the highest, nearly the whole of the
original civil litigation being in its hands.
In 1859 the Panjab became a lieutenant-governorship,^ and in
1 86 1, that year of notable changes, the Central Provinces was con-
stituted a separate administration under a chief commissioner with a
judicial commissioner as principal judicial authority.^ It comprised
the Sagar and Narbada territories and the Nagpur state, together wdth
certain other tracts acquired at various times. Its area, 100,000 square
miles including Berar, is slightly less than that of the United Provinces
and slightly greater than that of the Panjab.
After 1 86 1 all provinces came within the sphere of the Indian legis-
lature, though by no means identical laws applied to all. Some, such
as the principal codes, did so ; others applied to certain provinces only.
One result was the termination of any practical distinction between
regulation and non-regulation areas so far as administrative principles
and methods were concerned. The non-regulation system was replaced
by the constitution of "scheduled districts" under two enactments of
1870 and 1874.* In these areas only those legislative enactments were
to be in force which the government might so declare, and it was
further empowered to make special regulations for them. Both the
United Provinces and the Panjab contain minor areas of this kind,
mainly in the more remote hilly tracts.
After 1 858 land administration shared in the general development,
though without radical changes. The increasing prevalence of money-'
rents in the North-Western Provinces gradually furnished a more
accurate means of estimating the incomes of landlords, as well as the
rental value of non-rented lands, with reference to rents actually paid
or to those estimated to be fairly realisable ; thus affording a sounder
basis for revenue assessment than the original rough " aggregate to
* Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1882-3, p. 646, and 1911-12, p. 31.
' Adm. Rep. Panjab, 1882-3, P- 37-
* Government of India Resolution, Foreign Department, of 2 November, 1861 ; Adm.
Rep. Cent. Provs. 1882-3, P- i?-
* Baden Powell, Land Revenue Systems of British India, i, 89-92; Imp. Gaz* iv, 131.
LAND-REVENUE ASSESSMENT 279
detail" method. ^ Later, from 1878, as rent records became more
plentiful and reliable, actual as opposed to estimated rents were used
as data. In the second series of regular settlements, which began in
1858 and was completed in 1882, the standard of assessment was
reduced from two-thirds to one-half of net rental, though it is now
exceptional for even one-half to be taken. In the Panjab, rents being
comparatively rare and paid in kind, as is usually the case even now,
the original method of assessment was retained. ^ But in the course of
the next fifty years, as the renting of land became more common,
increased stress was laid on a money valuation of the kind-rental
received by landlords or, in the case of non-rented lands, of the kind-
rental which they could fairly pay if rented; though in practice,
especially towards the end of the period, in view of the preponderance
of peasant proprietors as well as for other reasons, the actual state
demand has usually been substantially below the theoretical standard
as measured on a rental basis. Revenue assessment in the Panjab was
and still is a matter of local knowledge and individual judgment
rather than of arithmetical calculations from assumed data. In the
specially insecure tracts in the south-west of that province systems of
fluctuating assessment have been introduced, under which land-
revenue is assessed at prescribed rates on such crops only as actually
mature at each harvest.^ The wide extension of state canal irrigation
in recent years has introduced complications into revenue adminis-
tration with which it is impossible to deal here. For the actual con-
sumption of water in irrigation specific water rates are charged, while
the increased rental value of the irrigated land is assessed to land-
revenue.
In Oudh after the Mutiny the estates of the rebellious talukdars
were formally confiscated, more in order to secure a clear field for the
determination of rights and the protection of subordinate tenures than
as a punitive measure. Accordingly their estates were returned to all
who submitted ; and thereafter they held them as grantees of the
government. By a reversal of the policy of 1 856, settlement of the
land-revenue was made in most cases with the talukdars; subject
however to the important proviso that where a subordinate village
community, or even single members thereof, had succeeded in main-
taining a virtual sub-proprietary status as against the talukdar, the
annual sum payable to him was fixed in amount, the community or
the single members retaining control of the land.^ This arrangement
is known as a "talukdari" settlement. After a second summary
settlement in 1858 the regular settlement of Oudh was begun on the
^ Baden Powell, op. cit. n, 47-61, 66-8; Moreland, The Revenue Administration of the
United Provinces, 191 1, pp. 41-5; Adm. Rep. N.-W. Provs. 1882-3, PP- 43-4-
2 Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 569-82 ; Panjab Settlement Manual, chap. vi.
^ Panjab Sett. Manual, chap. xxvi.
* Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, bk m, chap, iii; Adm. Rep. N.-W. Provs. 1882-3, p. 39; Moral
and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, P- ^32'
28o ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., C.P., AND PANJAB
above lines in i860 and completed in 1873. In about one-third of the
province, there being no talukdars, settlement was made with the
village communities in the usual way. Certain special incidents of
the talukdari tenure were regulated by legislation in 1869.
The land-revenue administration of the Nor th-Wes tern Provinces
was placed on a statutory basis by Act XIX of 1873 and that of Oudh
by Act XVII of 1876. They were replaced by Act III of 1901, which
applies to the present United Provinces (of Agra and Oudh) . The
corresponding enactments for the Panjab were XXXIII of 187 1 and
XVII of 1 887. All these deal with the powers and functions of revenue
officers of all grades, with the principles and procedure of land-revenue
assessment, and with the maintenance of records of rights ; but the
subjects of tenancy and rent are regulated by separate enactments.
In the newly constituted Central Provinces most of the villages were
of the ryotwari type. Under the oppressive rule of the Marathas very
many of them had been farmed, commonly to their own headmen,
who were termed patels. Over groups of others various classes of
persons, local tribal chiefs or their relatives, grantees of state revenue,
and others, had acquired a proprietary status on quasi-feudal con-
ditions as jagirdar or talukdar. Prior to 1861 summary settlements
of various kinds had been made. It was decided at the regular settle-
ment, which began in 1863 and was completed in 1870, to recognise
all the above classes as proprietors, under the common designation of
malguzar, or revenue-payer, and to make the settlement with them.^
This arrangement, however, in strong contrast to the Bengal system,
was combined with an ample measure of tenant-right, by which a
large majority of tenants received substantial protection. This form
of settlement is known as malguzari. In the first regular settlement the
assessment of land-revenue followed generally the *' aggregate to
detail " method already described. ^ Tenants whose claims were based
on length of time or on the expenditure of capital on improvements
were recognised as full proprietors of their holdings, practically
independent of the malguzar. Others with weaker claims were allowed
an occupancy tenure, varying in its incidents, but in all cases affording
security in respect of ejectment and rent, the latter being fixed at
settlement but liable to periodical revision.^ The tenancy law was
codified on the above principles by acts passed in 1883 and 1898,
which also gave a measure of similar protection to ordinary tenants
without occupancy right. The land-revenue law of the Central
Provinces was embodied in Acts XVIII of 188 1 and XII of 1898.*
In consequence of the special position of tenants rents have ceased to
be the direct result of economic forces, so that the assessment of land-
* Baden Powell, op. cit. ii, 385-8; Adm. Rep. Cent. Provs. 191 1-12, pp. 22, 23; Moral and
Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, P- ^S?*
2 Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 390.
' Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 478-99: Adm. Rep. Cent. Provs. 1911-12, p. 26.
* Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 501.
TENANT RIGHT 281
revenue is primarily the assessment of such rents as the settlement
officer may consider reasonable in the circumstances of the tract
concerned. The actual method employed, known as the "soil unit"
system, is complex. Its main object is the equalisation of rent incidence
with reference to the quality of soil, which is minutely classified by
means of a proportionately numerical valuation in terms of an
assumed common unit, known as the "soil unit". Having regard to
certain general considerations a fair rent rate per unit is determined,
and by a discreet application of this rate, more or less modified
according to local circumstances, a fair rental for each holding and
village is framed.^ The land-revenue due to the government is about
one-half of the sum thus obtained. The land-revenue of Berar, which
is not legally British territory, though it is attached to the Central
Provinces, has been settled on the ryotwari system in force in the
Bombay Presidency. ^
In all three provinces assets due to agricultural improvements
effected by private labour and capital are exempted from assessment
for a period of years sufficient to yield a remunerative return ; while
the rigidity of the fixed land-revenue demand is mitigated by its
suspension or, when necessary, by its ultimate remission, on occasions
of widespread agricultural calamity.
For many years after the Mutiny tenant right constituted a very
intricate problem in the North-Western Provinces, Oudh, and the
Panjab. The Bengal Act X of 1859 applied only to the first, but it was
replaced by the successive North-Western Provinces Acts XVIII of
1873 and XII of 1 88 1, though neither effected any change of prin-
ciple.3 These acts protected certain tenants of long standing in the
permanently settled Benares districts as well as tenants who had once
been proprietors, and they maintained the twelve-years rule which
has been already explained in another chapter. A certain measure of
protection was also accorded to the interests of all tenants, while
collectors and subordinate revenue officers were empowered to dispose
judicially of suits between them and landlords. The later Act II of
1 90 1 effected no radical changes. In Oudh the first tenancy law was
the Rent Act XIX of 1868. In view of the wide protection afforded
to sub-proprietors under the talukdari settlement, occupancy right was
allowed only to those tenants who had lost proprietary right within
the thirty years preceding annexation, but this being found to be
insufficient,* a subsequent act (XII of 1886) went further by ensuring
to all non-occupancy tenants a tenure for seven years without increase
of rent; and even this measure has been found to be inadequate.
In the Panjab in 1863 a controversy arose as to the propriety of the
* Baden Powell, op. cit. ii, 415-31 ; Adm. Rep, Cent. Provs. 191 1-12, pp. 30-2.
2 Adm. Rep. Cent. Provs. pp. 27, 33.
* Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, p. 175; Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs. 1911-12, p. 19.
* Baden Powell, op. cit. 11, 246-9; Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs. p. 19.
282 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., C.P., AND PANJAB
methods by which tenant right had been treated in the first regular
setdement. It led to a lengthy enquiry into the actual status of tenants
throughout the province, of which the ultimate outcome was the
Panjab Tenancy Act XXVIII of 1868.^ While saving, subject to a
few -exceptions, all rights previously conferred, it abolished, for the
future, acquisition of occupancy right by mere lapse of time. On the
basis of existing custom and with reference to considerations of equity,
five classes of cultivators were defined as eligible for such a right, its
incidents varying with each class. The act also regulated the rents of
occupancy tenants, and afforded some measure of protection to all
tenants. It was considerably amended and amplified in details by the
existing Act XVI of 1887.
Mainly as a result of the famine of 1 860-1 the question of the
extension of the permanent settlement to Upper India was revived
after the lapse of fifty years. ^ An influential official school inclined
to the view that such a measure would foster economic prosperity, and
in 1862 the secretary of state. Sir Charles Wood, went so far as to
accept it in principle. But further prolonged discussion of methods
and details showed not only its impracticability but also its essential
unwisdom, and in 1882 it was finally abandoned after it had been
established that in permanently settled tracts prosperity was no
greater than elsewhere. In recent years short-period settlements have
been avoided as far as possible, and a general term of thirty years
adopted, except in tracts where specially rapid development due to
the construction of state canals is foreseen.
Special measures for the organised collection of reliable information
regarding the economic condition of a vast agricultural population,
coupled with the maintenance of correct records of landed rights, were
initiated in the last quarter of the century.^ Previous efforts in this
direction had been confined to the occasion of a settlement of the
land-revenue, so that by the expiration of its term, many years later,
the statistics and records had necessarily become hopelessly out of
date. In 1875 reform was initiated in the North-Western Provinces,
and five years later a Famine Commission strenuously recommended
the establishment of special departments in each province. These
were constituted in 1880 under the designation of departments of land
records and agriculture, each under a provincial director. Originally
they had little concern with technical agriculture : their function was
to secure the two main objects already indicated. Of the first the
primary purpose is to obtain the earliest possible information of the
premonitory symptoms of famine, though many other useful ends are
also secured. By the continuous maintenance of correct records of
* H. of C. Papers, 1870, vol. liii; Panjab Sett. Manual, p. 100 sq.; Baden Powell, op. cit.
n, 705-22.
* H. ofC. Papers, 1887, vol. l; Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 340-9; Panjah Sett. Manual, p. 254;
Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, PP* ^^1~^9-
' Baden Powell, op. cit. i, 349-60; Report of Famine Commission, 1880; Imp. Gaz- rv, 24.
IRRIGATION 283
rights it was hoped to shorten the settlement operations periodically
undertaken in each district, a hope which has been realised. The
introduction of more scientific methods of cadastral survey has greatly
promoted progress in this direction, while all transfers of right are
promptly attested and registered, correct record being thereby facili-
tated. As the result of the policy adopted, the three provinces now
possess up-to-date land records probably unrivalled in the world, and
containing detailed information about each one of several millions of
fields and holdings and many thousands of villages ; while the usual
duration of settlement operations in a district has been reduced from
six years to little more than three.
The importance of irrigation is indicated by the fact that the total
area of crops irrigated by state canals in the Panjab and the United
Provinces increased from seven and a half million acres in the first
years of the present century to nearly eleven million acres in 1917-18,^
while the entire capital cost of the works in the latter year was approxi-
mately twenty-two millions sterling. The greatest progress has been
in the Panjab where the area irrigated quadrupled during the forty
years ending 1918. It was in 1866,2 ^hen Lord Lawrence, as viceroy,
inaugurated the policy of financing productive public works from
loan funds, that the modern development of irrigation began. The
first-fruits were the Sirhind^ Canal in the cis-Satlej-Panjab, which,
originally proposed in 1841, was sanctioned in 1870 and opened in
1882, with a total length, inclusive of branches and distributaries, of
3700 miles ; the Lower Ganges Canal in the southern part of the Doab
of the North- Western Provinces, sanctioned in 1872 and completed
in 1878, and the Agra Canal, opened in 1874, which provides irriga-
tion on the west of the Jumna. Between 1870 and 1876 the Upper
Bari Doab Canal, and fifteen years later the Western Jumna Canal
were greatly improved and extended.
But the colony canals of the Panjab have been the most striking
irrigational development of the period under review.* Their primary
object was not to serve areas already cultivated, but to make possible
the colonisation and development of the immense areas of waste
crown land which existed in the province within recent years and on
which large numbers of colonists selected from congested districts
have since been settled on specific terms as lessees of the state. The
encouraging results of two experiments made on non-perennial canals
in the 'eighties led to more ambitious schemes. In 1890 work began
on a perennial canal, with a head weir from the river Chenab,
designed to irrigate the waste tract — termed Bar — lying between it
and the Ravi. Now known as the Lower Chenab Canal, it has proved
^ Imp. Gaz. Ill, 331 ; Statistical Abstract relating to British India, 191 7-1 8, p. 150.
2 Imp. Gaz. TV, 329; H. of C. Papers, 1866, vol. Ln; 1867, vol. l.
^ Triennial Review of Irrigation, 1918-21, Calcutta, 1922, pt m, chap. v.
* Idem, pt in, chap. vi.
284 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., G.P., AND PANJAB
to be one of the most successful irrigation systems in India, if not in
the world. Its total length is nearly 2700 miles. Colonisation began
in 1892, with the aid of a defective "inundation" canal, but the new
canal was not complete until 1899. By 1901 the population of the
tract had increased from practically nil to 800,000, while the area
now annually irrigated exceeds two million acres. The yearly net
revenue from the canal is nearly 40 per cent, of its capital cost of more
than two millions sterling. The headquarters of the colony are at
Lyallpur, one of the most flourishing towns in Upper India. The
second Colony Canal, ^ the Lower Jehlam, in the tract between the
rivers Jehlam and Chenab, though sanctioned in 1888 was not begun
until 1898 and was opened in 1902. Its results have been satisfactory.
At the beginning of the century a project was on foot for the irrigation
of the lower portion of the Bari Doab from the river Satlej. Meanwhile
a commission^ was appointed in 1901 for the formulation, after full
enquiry into past results and existing needs, of a definite irrigation
policy for India as a whole. It reported in 1903. It found in the
Panjab one of the few tracts in which there was scope for the execution
of large productive schemes, which would both be financially re-
munerative and also augment the food supply of the country. It
supported the proposal to irrigate the lower part of the Bari Doab
while recommending the examination of an alternative scheme,
suggested by Sir James Wilson, a distinguished civil servant, and
Col. Jacob, an eminent irrigation officer, which substituted for a canal
from the Satlej a chain of canals which would successively convey the
water of the river Jehlam across the intervening Chenab and Ravi
rivers to the lower Bari Doab. This scheme, now known as the Triple
Project^ and comprising the Upper Jehlam, Upper Chenab and
Lower Bari Doab canals, was ultimately approved. Its construction,
which cost seven millions sterling, took ten years, from 1905 to 19 15.
The first two canals supply water to the third while irrigating extensive
areas in the tracts through which they pass. The total length of the
canals with distributaries is 3400 miles and the area irrigated nearly
two million acres. Colonisation was still in progress in 191 8.
In the United Provinces the Betwa Canal, a protective work for
insecure districts in Bundelkhand, was opened in 1885 and proved its
value in the later famines. The Irrigation Commission recommended
other protective but non-remunerative works, of which the Ken Canal,
also in Bundelkhand, was opened in 1908. Up to 1907 there were no
state irrigation works in the Central Provinces. Until 1896 a com-
plete failure of rain had been unknown, but in the following famine
years the tract suffered severely. The commission, holding that pro-
tective irrigation was necessary, recommended the construction of
* Triennial Review, p. 137.
* Imp. Gaz. HI, 351 sq.; Triennial Review, pp. 109-10; Report of Indian Irrigation Commission,
Calcutta, 1903« ^ Triennial Review, pp. 131 sqq.
FAMINES 285
small canals, and also of reservoirs for the storage of local rainfall and
of the comparatively precarious river supply. Up to 1918^ several of
the latter had been completed, the most notable being the Ramtek
tank in the Nagpur district with a capacity of 4000 million cubic feet,
while three fairly large canals were still under construction. In 191 8
several large new schemes for the Panjab and the United Provinces
were being considered. Some of these have since matured, the most
noteworthy being the Satlej valley project,^ with an estimated capital
cost of nine and a half millions sterling.
As a result of the extensive development which has been sketched
above irrigation had by 191 8 become an important branch of district
administration. Local work is in the hands of officers of the irrigation
branch of the provincial public works department, but the collector
is intimately concerned with its success and is generally consulted in
all important developments. Moreover, he and his superiors, as land-
revenue officers, have a preponderant voice in the determination of
the rates charged for the consumption of canal water, while he is also
responsible for the collection of the resulting demand, though its
actual assessment at harvest time is usually made by irrigation officers.
Ini9i7-i8net revenue from state canals in the Panj ab was i • 8 millions
sterling, in the United Provinces £580,000, while in the Central
Provinces there was none.^
Modern famine policy has been treated in another chapter, but a
few facts may be added here.* In 1 860-1 severe famine affected an
area of 50,000 square miles containing a population of twenty millions.
It comprised the south-eastern Panjab and the west of the present
United Provinces. The policy of relief on public works, initiated in
1837-8, was retained and expanded, while poorhouses for the gra-
tuitous relief of the incapable were opened for the first time. Remis-
sions of revenue were comparatively small but considerable advances
were made. Gratuitous relief appears to have been liberal : in the
Hissar district of the Panjab, for example, its recipients were treble
the number of persons on relief works. ^ The same tract was again
severely attacked in 1868-9 by a famine which was far more wide-
spread than the last. Distress was extreme, mortality great, and the
destruction of cattle immense, while a heavy influx of starving multi-
tudes from the feudatory states, which were without famine organisa-
tion, greatly aggravated the situation and in fact broke down the
relief system. In the United Provinces the state spent nearly Rs. 30
lakhs in addition to heavy expenditure in the Panjab.^ In 1896-7 the
same areas again suffered from intense famine, and the Central
Provinces were for the first time affected. But on this occasion the
^ Triennial Review, p. 128. ^ Jdem, p. 170. ' Statistical Abstract, 191 7-1 8, p. 150.
* Imp. Gaz. HI, 485; Rep. ofFam. Comm. 1880, p. lo.^Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs. 191 1-12, p. 12;
H. of C. Papers, 1862, vol. xl. ^ Gazetteer of Hisar District, 1892, p. 23.
® Imp. Gaz. I"} 487; Rep. of Fam. Comm. 1880, p. 12; Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs. 1911-12,
p. 22.
286 ADMINISTR.\TION IN U.P., C.P., AND PANJAB
organisation, as testified by the subsequent Famine Commission of
1898/ was far more efficient than it had been previously, while the
agricultural population generally showed a power, hitherto unknown,
of meeting the disaster. In the Panjab Hissar was again the most dis-
tressed district, and it accounted for more than one-half of the total
number relieved in that province, at one time as many as 1 5 per cent,
of its total population being in receipt of relief Rs. 167 lakhs were
spent in the United Provinces and Rs. 23 lakhs in the Panjab in addi-
tion to heavy suspensions and remissions of land-revenue. ^ Once more
in 1 899-1 900 the south-eastern Panjab and the Central Provinces
were very severely attacked. Distress was more intense than in 1 896-7
and cattle mortality, owing to a complete failure of fodder, enormous.^
In the Panjab the death-rates of the affected districts rose considerably
but mortality from actual starvation was prevented. Relief operations
in that province cost Rs. 48 lakhs, most of which was incurred in the
Hissar district. The great development of irrigation and of communi-
cations which has been achieved in recent years, the elaboration of
a complete famine organisation, not only in British territory but also
in the feudatory states, and, last but not least, the growth of general
economic prosperity have gone far to vanquish one of India's direct
and most persistent scourges.
The forests of India are of the first importance, not only for their
natural products but also through their influence on climate, rainfall,
and water supply. As has been truly said they are "the head works
of Nature's irrigation scheme in India". Under native rule unchecked
destruction and wasteful misuse did untold damage. Up to 1855
British attempts at management were sporadic and dominated by
considerations of revenue, but in that year Lord Dalhousie inaugurated
a policy of scientific conservation and regulated exploitation.* An
inspector-general of forests was appointed nine years later, but it was
not until 1869 that an organised forest department with a staff of
trained officers came into existence. Indian forest lands are the
property of the state, though generally more or less burdened with
public or private customary rights of user, largely grazing, in favour
of village communities or individuals; a feature which mainly decides
the degree of conservation which can be applied. Those classed as
"reserved" are important for purposes of scientific forestry. Forests
are "protected " with a view to later reservation or in order to increase
their direct utility to the agricultural population ; while in " unclassed "
forests very few, if any, restrictions are enforced. The first legal basis
for forest administration was the Indian Forest Act of 1865, which
was replaced by the existing Act VII of 1878. It prescribes, inter alia,
* Rfp. of Fam. Comm. 1898.
* Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs. 191 1-12, p. 23; Adm. Rep. Panjab, 191 1-12, p. 24.
3 Adm. Rep. Panjab, 191 1-12, p. 25.
* Imp. Gaz. in, 107 sq.', Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, pp. 202 sqq.\ H. ofC. Papers,
1871, vol. m.
FORESTS 287
a procedure for the adjudication and record of public and private
rights in forest lands and for their extinction in the reserves, if necessary,
by compensation or exchange; the entire operation being known as
a forest settlement. Each provincial government has a forest depart^
ment under a conservator of forests. For executive purposes there are
deputy-conservators, or district forest officers, each in charge of a
division, corresponding to a civil district, with an assistant and a
subordinate staff. The collector is not concerned with technical forest
work, but the deputy-conservator is under his control in all matters
which directly concern the people, such as grazing in forests, levy of
fees, and supply of forest produce. The collector, or a specially deputed
officer, carries out forest settlement operations, often a lengthy and
intricate business. Up to 1921 the Government of India controlled
forest administration through its inspector-general. The main objects
of the department are scientific improvement and regeneration of the
forests, and, as subsidiary measures, protection from fire and from
illicit grazing. Produce of various kinds is commercially extracted in
accordance with prescribed working plans, which regulate this as well
as other branches of forest technique. The United Provinces and the
Panjab are not of great importance as measured by the proportion of
forest to total area, which is 7 per cent, in each. In the Central
Provinces, however, the figure is 20 per cent., the forest area consisting
of 20,000 square miles of "reserves ".^ Former large areas of unclassed
forest in the Panjab plains have been entirely colonised in recent
years. The reserves in all three provinces are chiefly in the hills.
Smuggled importation from feudatory states together with the wide
prevalence of illicit distillation of alcohol, facilitated by the abundance
of suitable material supplied by the cultivated sugar-cane and by the
wild mahua tree {Bassia latifolia), long hindered progress in excise
administration. But by 1918 much had been accomplished through
restriction of supply to supervised distilleries and by improving the
quality of the preventive establishment.^ An excise law, applying to
the North-Western Provinces, was passed in 1856, which provided
for central distilleries. But in view of their previous failure, it was not
until 1863 that they generally displaced the system of farms and out-
stills in the North-Western Provinces, though in Oudh they had been
introduced in 186 1. A duty was levied on all spirituous liquor pro-
duced, and the right of vend at specified shops was leased separately.
By 1870 it became clear that the change had been too extensive, and
in 1873 illicit traffic was found to be very prevalent. Again there was
a reversion to farms and out-stills in many districts. Matters remained
thus in the United and the Central Provinces until the early years of
this century, farms and out-stills prevailing in one-third and nearly
^ Statistical Abstract, 191 7-18, p. 157.
2 Imp. Gaz. 11, 235; Pari. Papers, lxii, 60^ sqq.', Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3, PP-
1 70-1; Papers relating to Excise administration in India, Government of India Gazette j
1 March, 1890.
288 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., G.P., AND PANJAB
three-fourths of their respective areas. Throughout the Panjab, where
previously there had been no excise restrictions, the farming system
was in force for some years after annexation, but in 1863 it was en-
tirely replaced by central distilleries, with separate licences for sale at
specified shops. Under this system, which continued for nearly forty
years, taxation was substantially increased, so that by 1890 illicit
traffic was more rife than in the rest of India. In the early years of
this century central distilleries gave place throughout the province to
a few private distilleries of modern type located at selected places.
Under direct official supervision and in mutual competition, they
supplied spirituous liquor, after payment of duty, and at prices liable
to government control, to local vendors, who were separately licensed
for specified shops. The system was known as the "free supply"
system. Only in two small areas, peculiarly situated, were out-stills
allowed.
With the passing of an Excise Act in 1896 matters had developed
thus far when in 1905 the government referred the whole question of
excise administration in India to a committee for review and for
advice.^ In doing so it declared definitely that, while refusing to inter-
fere with the moderate use of alcohol, its settled policy was to minimise
temptation for the abstainer and to discourage excess among others ;
and that no considerations of revenue could be allowed to hamper
this policy. It held that the most effective means of pursuing this
was as high a taxation of liquor as was possible without stimulating
illicit production and resort to harmful substitutes. While recognising
that uniformity of method was impossible, it regarded the continuance
of extensive farm and out-still areas, of crude distillery systems, and
of low rates of taxation as defects to be remedied as soon as possible.
After a lengthy enquiry the committee in 1906 submitted with its
report detailed recommendations for the future course of excise ad-
ministration, most of which, with some modifications, are now in
force.2 In each of the three provinces spirituous liquor is made in
private licensed distilleries under official supervision. After payment
of duty it is supplied to local licensed vendors under officially con-
trolled arrangements and at regulated prices. Out-still areas have
been reduced to a minimum in the United and the Central Provinces,
and entirely abolished in the Panjab. Separate licences, containing
many desirable prohibitions and restrictions, for the retail vend of
liquor at specified shops are issued on fees which are generally deter-
mined by auction. The duty is enhanced from time to time with the
object of increasing the proportion borne by its yield to that of vend
fees ; but the risk of stimulating illicit distillation hampers the process.
On all foreign liquor, spirituous or fermented, import duty is levied,
* Report of the Excise Committee, 1905-6, and Government of India Resolutions
thereon, in Pari. Papers, 1907, lviii, 645 sqq.
' Provincial Excbe Administration Reports for 1 907-8 and subsequent years.
AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 289
and sale is controlled by licences ; while the production of beer, mainly
for European consumption, is also subject to excise regulations. The
general Excise Act has been replaced by separate provincial enact-
ments.
Opium was extensively grown in the Panjab before its annexation,
but its cultivation, manufacture and sale were soon brought under
control.^ The first was gradually restricted and is now prohibited
except in a few small hill tracts, very little opium being at present
locally produced. For public consumption opium manufactured by
government agency is issued at a monopoly price to vendors licensed,
on fees usually determined by auction, to sell at specified shops. In
the United and the Central Provinces the supply is confined to such
government opium.
In 1893 a commission investigated the production, sale and con-
sumption of drugs made from the hemp plant {Cannabis sativa).^ It
did not recommend prohibition, but control and restriction. The
control is enforced by a system of licences for sale similar to liquor
licences. Cultivation has been greatly restricted, most of the supply
being imported from Central Asia.
Local excise administration is one of the more important duties of
the collector. The work has grown greatly in volume and complexity
in the present century ; the total net revenue of the three provinces
in 1 91 7-1 8 being 2-2 millions sterling.
Important developments connected with agriculture, with rural
indebtedness, and with the closely allied subject of co-operation have
taken place within recent years. As has been already stated the
provincial departments of land records and agriculture, instituted in
1880, had little concern with technical agriculture. In 190 1, as a first
step towards its more scientific organisation, the Indian Government
appointed an inspector-general of agriculture with a small staff of
experts. During the next few years the subject of agriculture was
separated from land records and provincial departments instituted,
each under a director with a small staff, subsequendy increased by
the addition of trained officers. The fundamental object of these
departments is the development, by experiment and research, of
improved agricultural methods and implements, of better qualities
of seed, and of effective means of coping with crop diseases and insect
pests. With the growth of the departments many experimental stations
and demonstration farms had been established by 19 15 and were
doing satisfactory work.^ Several cultural and manurial problems
had been dealt with, greatly improved varieties of seed for important
crops had been produced, and the introduction of better implements
had begun. For the provision of sound agricultural training on
^ Imp. Gaz. IV, 245; Report of Opium Commission, 1893, //. ofC. Papers, 1895, vol. xlii.
^ Report of Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893, ^^^ Government of India Resolu-
tion thereon of 21 March, 1895.
* Annual Reports of Provincial Agricultural Departments.
CHIVI 19
290 ADMINISTRATION IN U.P., G.P., AND PANJAB
scientific lines, an essential feature of the entire scheme, provincial
agricultural colleges, with research institutes attached, have been
established; while a central college at Pusa in Bihar provides more
advanced instruction. The three provinces have taken their full share
in the progress, their colleges being located at Cawnpore, Nagpur,
and Lyallpur respectively. The last, situated in the Chenab colony,
is now a leading centre of research, experiment and instruction.
Though the modern movement was started not in response to popular
demand, but on the initiative of the government, the agricultural
department has succeeded to a surprising degree in securing the con-
fidence of the rural classes. The collector, though having no control of
its technical operations in his district, is closely concerned with it on
its administrative side and with its general results.
Debt is an inevitable adjunct of peasant agriculture, but under an
unhealthy system of credit, where numerous illiterate and often
thriftless rural borrowers are in the toils of literate and astute money-
lenders, it is apt to become both a fruitful economic evil and a political
danger. The grant of freely transferable proprietary rights to the
peasantry of the Panjab and of the United Provinces, combined with
a novel moderation in the fiscal demands of the state, put at its dis-
posal a volume of credit which grew with the value of land and of its
produce. In the period 1 875-1 900 indebtedness increased rapidly,
and with it the sale and mortgage of agricultural land. In the Panjab
the evil had attained alarming proportions by the latter year. After
very prolonged investigation and discussion a remedy was sought in
legislation. The Panjab Alienation of Land Act of 1900,^ while not
affecting transfers of land between members of the agricultural tribes
of the province, narrowly restricts such transfers where the transferees
are members of other classes, which include most of the professional
money-lenders. The undue restriction of credit, the general fall in
land values, the widespread evasion which some anticipated as
necessary results of the measure, have not occurred. Credit is being
placed on a more healthy basis by the co-operative movement noticed
below; the rise of land values, though not necessarily beneficial to the
rural population, has continued steadily, while the peasant himself
now regards the act as an indispensable factor of his economic
security. Its proper administration is one of the important duties of
the deputy-commissioner. Similar legislation has not been found to be
necessary in the United Provinces except in Bundelkhand, where it
was introduced in 1903.^
It is, however, rural co-operation combined with improved agri-
cultural practice, which is proving itself to be the most effective means
of raising the economic condition of the peasantry. The subject is one
which deserves a much closer study than is possible here. After a
* Adm. Rep. Panjab, 191 1 -12, p. 49, and other extensive literature.
* Adm. Rep. Unit. Provs. 1911-12, p. 20.
CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES 291
preliminary period of investigation, with practical experiments in
various parts of India, a Co-operative Credit Societies Act was passed
in 1 904, which provided legal facilities for the formation and working
of such societies. In the light of subsequent experience it was replaced
by the Co-operative Societies Act of 191 2, an improved measure of
wider scope, which, in addition to credit societies, provided for societies
co-operative in the purchase of seed and implements, the marketing
of produce, and in other activities. A rural credit society is broadly
of the German Raiffeisen type, though with certain differences. Its
membership is confined to a small specified area, and its function is
to lend among its members for approved objects connected with
agriculture, including reasonable domestic consumption, funds raised
on their joint and several unlimited liability. A small entrance fee is
charged, and in the Panjab and the United Provinces, but not in the
Central Provinces, each member contributes in addition a small
amount of share capital. Deposits are received from both members
and non-members, and further capital is borrowed from other societies
or from central banks, which form an integral part of the system and
are in touch with the external money market. A committee of mem-
bers constitutes the managing body, and as no paid staff is employed,
working expenses are at a minimum; but borrowers are charged a
rate of interest, which, though much less than that usually taken by
money-lenders from single borrowers, allows of the accumulation of
a reserve fund. The whole of the above resources are employed as
working capital ; and an immense alleviation of rural indebtedness is
being gradually effected, while the moral education in self-help,
thrift, self-respect, and social solidarity which is being silently im-
parted can scarcely be overestimated. Many societies for co-operative
objects other than credit have been started. In each province the
local government appoints a registrar with one or two assistants, who,
with a trained staff, superintend and advise the societies in addition
to performing statutory functions under the act.^ The figures for
agricultural societies in 191 8-1 9 — United Provinces, 3177; Central
Provinces, 3871 ; Panjab, 5087 — show the extent to which the move-
ment has spread. It is one of the most effective economic and educative
influences which have been introduced into India.
The modern development of local self-government is described in
another chapter. Beginning in 1873 with Lord Mayo's measures for
the decentralisation of finance,^ it was placed by Lord Ripon in
1 88 1-2 on a broader basis, with a largely increased elective element
and with a limited degree of freedom from official control. In actual
practice, however, most local bodies were dominated by the influence
of the district officer, and, in financial matters especially, by the
^ Annual Provincial Reports.
^ Imp. GaZ' IV, 287 sqq.'y Pari. Papers, 1883, li, i sqq.-, Moral and Mat. Prog. Rep. 1882-3,
PP- 59-63-
1 9-2
292 ADMINISTR.\TION IN U.P., G.P., AND PANJAB
increasingly centralised control of the provincial government and its
departments ; both being exercised in the interests of administrative
efficiency, which otherwise, there can be little doubt, would have
seriously deteriorated, there being then no public opinion competent
to compel local bodies to discharge their responsibilities. The district
officer was not merely the controlling guide of local bodies, but their
main active element; their affairs forming a considerable part of his
daily work; a position which continued until the Indian Decentralisa-
tion Commission issued its report in 1909. It found that progress in
local self-government had been hindered because local bodies, and
more especially rural boards, had no real power and responsibility
owing to want of funds and to excessive control. It made many drastic
proposals for removing the trammels, the more important of which,
after reference to provincial governments, the Indian Government
accepted in 1915^ with certain reservations and modifications. As a
general result central departmental control was much relaxed and in
some respects abrogated ; local bodies have been placed in a freer and
stronger financial position; while in municipalities official chairmen
have for the most part disappeared. What the ultimate practical
outcome will be in terms of public health and convenience remains
to be seen. In the year 191 7-18 there were in the United Provinces,
the Central Provinces and in the Panjab, 83, 57 and 100 munici-
palities respectively, which contained in the case of the first two 6| per
cent., and in the case of the third 8 per cent, of the whole provincial
population. 2
The important subject of education has been treated elsewhere. Its
administration being for the most part in the hands of the provincial
education departments, its connection with district administration
has been mainly through the local bodies, who have helped to finance
primary, and to some extent also secondary education, without,
however, exercising much actual control over either. The function of
the district officer has been to co-operate, advise and encourage on
a basis of general interest, supervision and local knowledge.
The main lines which the development of district administration
has followed have now been sketched. Throughout the process the
district officer — collector or deputy-commissioner — on the whole re-
tained the position of principal local official of the government, in
direct control, so far as his district was concerned, of its chief activities,
and in direct touch with all others conducted by more purely depart-
mental officials not wholly subordinate to him. The extremely multi-
farious nature of his work has been indicated. His primary duties are
the collection of revenue from the land and from other sources, and
the exercise of judicial powers, criminal and revenue, both of first
instance and in appeal. But police, jails, municipalities, rural boards,
^ Government of India Resolutions 55-77, a8 April, 1915.
* Statistical Abstract for 191 7-18, p. 98.
i
THE DISTRICT OFFICER 293
education, roads, sanitation, dispensaries, local taxation, agricultural
statistics, records of rights and irrigation are matters with which he
is more or less daily concerned, directly or indirectly. He is also
responsible for the maintenance and submission of correct accounts of
extensive local receipts and expenditure, and for the safe custody of
large amounts of public money. He must, moreover, be familiar with
the social life of the people and with the natural aspects of his district.
But the district officer who should seek to undertake personally the
daily minutiae of all these subjects would be unwise, not to say in-
competent. With a comparatively few of them to do so is inevitable,
but the main, the most important work is continuous supervision and
control of subordinates, combined with a broad view and a strong but
kindly grasp of the changing aspects and the half-expressed needs of
the mass of human beings committed to their care. Centralised
control has doubtless increased; but the common complaint that it
has harmfully restricted the initiative of the district officer is in the
main an exaggeration. It has certainly increased his otherwise mani-
fold preoccupations, and where he has not been provided with ade-
quate staff the result has been harmful. But he has been able to
succeed just in so far as he has appreciated the need for, and has
skilfully arranged, wherever possible, a devolution of actual work to
properly qualified subordinates.
CHAPTER XVII
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE POLICY
JL HREE hundred years ago the Dutchman, Francisco Pelsaert,
travelling in Upper India, described in vivid language the relations
between agriculture and the seasons :
The year is here divided into three seasons. In April, May and June the heat is
intolerable, and men can scarcely breathe, more than that, hot winds blow con-
tinuously, as stifling as if they came straight from the furnace of hell. The air is
filled with the dust raised by violent whirlwinds from the sandy soil, making day
like the darkest night that human eyes have seen or that can be grasped by the
imagination. Thus in the afternoon of 15 June, 1624, 1 watched a hurricane of dust
coming up gradually, which so hid the sky and the sun that for two hours people
could not tell if the world was at an end, for the darkness and fury of the wind
could not have been exceeded. Then the storm disappeared gradually, as it had
come, and the sun shone again. The months of June, July, August, September and
October are reckoned as the rainy season, during which it sometimes rains steadily.
The days are still very hot, but the rain brings a pleasant and refreshing coolness.
In November, December, January, February and March it is tolerably cool, and
the climate is pleasant.
From April to June the fields lie hard and dry, unfit for ploughing or sowing
owing to the heat. When the ground has been moistened by a few days' rain, the
cultivators begin to sow indigo, rice and various food grains eaten by the poor.
When all these are'oflf the land, they plough and sow again, for there are two harvests;
that is to say in December and January they sow wheat and barley, various pulses
and "alsi" (linseed) from which oil is extracted. Large numbers of wells have to
be dug in order to irrigate the soil, for at that time it is beginning to lose its productive
power. Provided the rain is seasonable and the cold is not excessive, there is a
year of plenty, not merely of food, but in the trade of all sorts of commodities. *
But if the rain is not seasonable, if the monsoon fails over large
tracts which cannot be sufficiently irrigated from ponds, rivers, wells
or canals, the crops which are the mainstay of the countryside must
be sown in a much restricted area and will often be poor even there ;
the grass which has been burnt up by the blazing sun and burning
winds of March, April and May cannot revive, and both the milch-
cows and the plough and transport cattle, which are the cultivator's
working capital, are decimated. The water level falls; and the supply
is tainted with noxious germs. The peasantry see their means of live-
lihood vanish. If no remedy be forthcoming they must starve.
Destitution will bring cholera and pestilence in its train ; and thousands
of humble lives will be sacrificed. Such is famine in that grim shape
which it has often worn. But nature sometimes relents; and man has
done much to combat this king of terrors.
The drought which follows a feeble monsoon may be mitigated by
light winter rains; and in any case there are marked differences of
* Pelsaert, Jehangir^s India, pp. 47-8. For an account of the climate and rainfall see
vol. I, chap, i of this History.
MEANS OF IRRIGATION 295
climate and inequalities of rainfall. The populations have accustomed
themselves to this circumstance both in their density and in their
selection of crops. There are wet provinces and dry provinces, wet
areas and dry areas, sometimes within the same district; there are wet
crops and dry crops. If communications are adequate there are
flourishing tracts to come to the rescue of those less favoured. Rain
never fails throughout the whole country, even though the monsoon
sometimes disappoints not only regions inured to some degree of
drought but those which are usually blessed with abundant rainfall.
When the south-west monsoon is over the young winter crops, and
in parts the later rice, need artificial irrigation; and if the rainfall has
been deficient, the irrigation must be strenuous and constant. Rivers,
wells, "tanks" (artificial ponds) are all requisitioned. But in a dry
year, the supply from these sources shrinks, and canals, where they
exist, are the greatest stand-by of all. Large-scale systems of canals,
drawing supplies from rivers or artificial reservoirs, began with the
consolidation of British rule; but the West Jumna Canal, in a dilapi-
dated condition, was inherited from Moghul times ; and the Kaveri
delta canal system in Madras comes down from remote antiquity.^
In the year 1919-20 the total area irrigated by canals in British India
exceeded 27,000,000 acres. The total length of canals and distributaries
was 66,754 miles. The estimated value of the crops watered by govern-
ment irrigation works amounted to ^(^ 156,000,000, double the capital
expenditure which these works had entailed.
The storage of water and the regulation of its outflow are matters of
supreme importance to Indian agriculture. Wells, tanks and canals
play their part. But the wide extension of irrigation which marked
the years 1858-1918 could not have been achieved without the skilled
and devoted co-operation of the Indian forest service. To quote the
words of one of its most distinguished members :
It is by the agency of the forests that the surface-flow from the hills is restrained
after heavy rain; that the water level is maintained at such a height that it can be
reached by the primitive methods of the East; that the springs are kept supplied;
and that perennial springs may be made to flow in the place of those water-courses
trickling through dreary beds of sand, that would hardly be suspected of becoming
later on in the summer turbulent and muddy torrents, often carrying devastation
instead of blessing. ^
We need only summarise the history of famines before 1858. In
ancient times scarcity owing to floods or drought was not infrequent
and sometimes extended to a whole kingdom.^ But scarcities caused
by floods have always affected comparatively small areas, and inunda-
tions have left a fertilising silt. The great famines have been caused
by drought. In his elaborate studies of economic life under the
^ Moreland, India at the Death of Akbar, p. io8; Knowles, Economic Development of the
Overseas Empire, pp. 366-82; Moreland, From Akbar to Aurangzeb, pp. 195-6.
* Eardley-Wilmot, Forest Life and Sport in India, p. 5.
' Cf. vol. I, chap, viii, supra.
296 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE POLICY
Moghul emperors Mr Moreland has shown us that the famines then
were marked, not only by widespread mortahty and desolation, but
by suicide, voluntary enslavement and cannibalism.^ Before the "pax
Britannica" was definitely established the miseries of such times were
often aggravated by the ravages of armies. In 1802 the army of the
Maratha chief, Jasvant Rao Holkar, marching to Poona from the
north, laid waste the countryside. The Pindaris followed in its wake
and reduced the Deccan to such depths of misery and want that
human beings are said to have been devoured by the peasants.
Emigrants passed into the Konkan leaving a trail of dead and dying
behind them. The late rains failed ; the river at Poona was black with
putrescent corpses; and "hunger, hand in hand with cholera, left
many villages permanently desolate ".^ But, in any case, as long as
districts were land-locked and populations were isolated, famine
relief was largely regarded as hopeless. Almsgiving, storage of food
grains in central towns, remissions of revenue, digging of wells, were
palliatives occasionally resorted to. But no attempt was made to stem
the full tide of starvation and ruin. Even when the government of the
East India Company, recently established at Calcutta, was in 1 769-70
first brought face to face with responsibility for some measure of
relief, its dispatches,
while breathing a tone of sincere compassion for the sufferings of the people, were
busied rather with the fiscal results as affecting the responsibility of the Company
towards its shareholders, than with schemes which would have seemed wholly
visionary for counteracting the inevitable loss of life.^
There is no reason to dispute the finding of the 1880 Famine Com-
mission that up to the end of the eighteenth century "the position of
the British in India was not such as either to create any sense of
general obligation to give relief, or to supply sufficient means of
affording it". While the administration was endeavouring to find its
feet, while wars frequently carried devastation into large tracts of
country, while the effects of climatic disturbances on food crops were
largely a matter of conjecture, while agricultural, economic and vital
statistics were unknown, while it was difficult to transmit information
speedily, while the absence of communications rendered the timely
transmission of grain for long distances or in large quantities a very
arduous or an impossible undertaking, while half-starved bullocks or
heavy barges were the sole means of transport, famine was regarded
as a calamity wholly transcending the powers of man to counteract
or even materially to mitigate.^ The years 1 765-1 858 were marked
by famines or scarcities in various parts of the country which were
dealt with by such measures as seemed best to the local governments
* Moreland, India at the Death of Akbar, chap, vii; From Akbar to Aurangzeby chap. vii.
2 Grant Duff, History of the Marathas (ed. Edwardes), ii, 368.
^ Report of the Famine Commission, 1880; of. Hickey, Memoirs, iii, 343-4.
* Gf. Kaye, British India, pp. 275-6, and Maconochie, Life in Indian Civil Service, pp. 9-10.
EARLIER FAMINES 297
or district officers concerned. No attempt was made to formulate any
general system of famine relief or prevention, although such experi-
ments as storage of grain by the government, penalties on hoarding,
bounties on import, poorhouses, advances of money to encourage the
sinking of wells, and relief works to afford employment, were under-
taken at one time or another. The only business which can afford
employment to Indian cultivators when tillage fails is earth-work,
the excavation of reservoirs, the construction of irrigation embank-
ments and the making of roads. But earth-works were never opened
on an adequate scale. When in 1837 famine visited the upper reaches
of the Ganges and the Jumna, the local government laid down the
principle that while the state found work for the able-bodied, the
whole community must, as in ordinary times, look after the helpless
and infirm. The measures adopted were quite insufficient. Heavy
mortality resulted; and violent riots broke out. Twenty years later
came the Mutiny, which was followed by the complete transfer of
government to the crown.
The period with which we are now concerned was marked by a
wide extension of railways ^ and other communications, by a rapid
growth of trade and overseas commerce, by a great expansion of
means of irrigation, by the development of an elaborate system of
public instruction, by agrarian legislation mainly in the interest of the
cultivators, by a gradual change in economic factors which, in spite
of a great increase of population, very gradually modified the character
of famines.
The seasons of 1858-9 were irregular; and in i860 the monsoon
practically failed over 48,000 square miles of the North-West Pro-
vinces around Agra. Alwar and other Indian states were affected;
and about half a million persons deserted the distressed tracts.
The provinces were still suffering from the effects of the Mutiny;
but their south-east districts and neighbour provinces had received
plenty of rain and were able to supply abundance of food grains.
Within the distressed area canals protected about 900,000 more acres
than they had protected in 1837; around it communications had
improved, and the East Indian Railway had progressed far enough
to render useful service. Free- trade principles were followed ; and, as
in 1837, it was declared that the state would provide employment for
the able-bodied while voluntary agency should give charitable relief
to the helpless and infirm. In fact, however, voluntary agency did
very little ; and the government found it necessary to undertake almost
the whole burden of relief. Able-bodied persons were organised in
gangs, housed in temporary sheds and employed upon earth-works
for roads or canals. Some helpless persons were relieved in their
homes and others in poorhouses where light tasks were imposed upon
the more capable inmates. The famine was on a small scale, but is
* For the early history of railways in India see Quarterly Review, 1868, cxxv, 48-78.
298 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE POLICY
remarkable for the fact that then for the first time a special enquiry
was held into the causes, area and intensity of such a calamity. While
it was proceeding Colonel Baird Smith was deputed to examine these
matters ; but his report did not lead to any formulation of general
principles of relief
We come now to the famine of 1866-7, which is known as the
Orissa famine because in Orissa it assumed its most terrible form ; but
it extended along the whole east coast from Calcutta to Madras and
penetrated inland. This calamity proved a turning point in the history
of Indian famines for it was followed by the investigations and report
of a committee (presided over by Sir George Campbell^) which laid
the foundations of a definite policy.
The causes of the famine were the failure of the autumn rains, and
consequently of the rice crops, of 1865, together with the almost com-
plete absence of importation into Orissa of food from outside. The
main stress of privation fell on the three British districts which form
a comparatively narrow strip between the uplands and the sea and
are intersected by rivers which swell enormously in the rainy season.
There is a large pilgrim traffic by land to Jagannath in the dry season ;
but commercial communications were then principally by sea from
several small ports open the greater part of the year but inaccessible
from the heavy surf and the prevalent winds after the breaking of the
south-west monsoon. The country is almost entirely a rice or water
country; but the supply of rain is generally ample, and there had been
no previous famines since Orissa became British territory. In 1865,
however, the monsoon ceased prematurely along the east coast, and
two-thirds of the rice crop were lost. Food stocks were low, as export
had been brisk of late years, but prices remained moderate for some
time. The warnings of certain local officers were disregarded, and
famine arrived like a thief in the night.
"In April 1866", says Campbell, "the magistrate of Guttack still reported that
there was no ground for serious apprehension. A few days later in May, he and his
followers were almost starved. We compared it to the case of a ship where the stores
are suddenly found to have run out."
A panic had set in and stores were withheld from the market. Every
Indian cultivator aims at growing and keeping his own food supply.
The market supply is what he sells to pay his rent and meet his cash
needs, but in times of scarcity even grain which can be spared is held
up. Dealers also incline to wait for higher prices. If, however, im-
portation from other districts is easily practicable, even a great failure
of crops will not lead to a widespread hold-up of stocks.
In Orissa panic arose suddenly. Importation was rapidly becoming
impracticable; and the local government had been slow to appreciate
the situation. Before anything effective could be done the monsoon
* Cf. his Memoirs of my Indian Career, ii, 149-55.
THE ORISSA FAMINE 299
broke and Orissa was sealed up for several months. There was terrible
suffering before adequate supplies could be obtained, although the
cultivators procured or had saved sufficient to sow their autumn crops.
In October the government poured in large supplies of grain, and
some local hoards were brought out by the dealers. A good new crop
was then being reaped, and the famine ended almost as suddenly as
it had begun, except in certain tracts, where excessive floods wrought
havoc. The Bengal government had provided such relief as it could
at a cost of about one and a half millions sterling. But the commis-
sioner of the division estimated that one-fourth of the population had
died. Campbell's committee did not think this estimate excessive;
but in the entire absence of statistics and of effective machinery for
ascertaining the facts was unable to form an accurate judgment. The
census of 187 1 showed an unexpectedly large population; and Gamp-
bell afterwards doubted whether the famine mortality had not been
exaggerated. The grain which poured in when the mischief was done
was largely wasted and lay unused till it rotted. In Ganjam, a neigh-
bouring district of the Madras Presidency, the situation had been
easier, but a prolonged duration of high prices pressed hardly on the
people and called for relief measures. The drought of 1865 extended
in some degree to Bihar and Bengal where relief was inadequate and
badly organised.
GampbelFs committee reported that timely measures had not been
taken to meet the terrible emergency which arose in May, 1866. The
Bengal government had completely failed to forecast developments
and had misled the central government. Blindly relying on the law
of demand and supply, they had not considered the isolation of Orissa
in the rainy season, and its customary dependence on its own food
supply. It was essential to improve communications considerably and
to initiate in Bengal the maintenance of land records and agricultural
statistics which was carried out in other provinces by a subordinate
revenue staff. The committee made recommendations which in some
measure anticipated those of the royal commission of 1880. Their
report produced a change of outlook; but Gampbell tells us that "the
idea rather prevailed that the Orissa failure was a personal failure
which need not occur again". John Lawrence, however, who was
then governor-general, blamed himself bitterly for having accepted
the facile assurances of the Bengal government, and, when famine
again appeared elsewhere in 1868, declared in council that his object
was "to save every life", and that district officers would be held
responsible that no preventible deaths occurred. The old doctrine
that the public would be responsible for the relief of the helpless and
infirm was entirely abandoned. Money was borrowed in order to
finance additional railways and canals.
Drought and famine in 1868-9 affected parts of the North-Western
Provinces and Panjab, but were more intense in wide stretches of
300 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE POLICY
Rajputana, and produced a great influx of emigrants into British
territory, severely straining public charity and tending to swamp
relief arrangements. The able-bodied were employed on large and
small works. Extra mortality was estimated at 1,200,000 and ascribed
mainly to cholera, smallpox and fever.
In 1873 the monsoon ceased prematurely in Northern Bihar,
causing a loss of much of the winter rice crop. Relief measures were
planned on a scale unknown before. Sir George Campbell, then
lieutenant-governor, wished to prohibit export of rice and other cereals
from Bengal overseas, the failure of these crops being largely confined
to the north-western districts of his charge. His idea was to save all
that was available in the south-east, to dam it up and drive it north-
ward. But the proposal did not commend itself to Lord Northbrook
who was then viceroy, and the central government arranged to
import 480,000 tons of rice mostly from Burma to the distressed area.
Even so up to April, 1874, the imports of rice barely equalled the
exports ; and during the whole famine year the exports of food from
Calcutta were about two-thirds of the imports. Tasks were not strictly
enforced on the relief works started in the distressed area, which con-
sisted of 40,000 square miles with a population of 17,000,000.
Gratuitous relief was given in villages on a very liberal scale. The
whole cost was six and a half millions, although famine had been
acute in two districts only: 800,000 tons of surplus grain remained on
the hands of the government and were sold at a heavy loss. Relief
was undoubtedly extravagant ; but, for the first time in Indian history,
a serious failure of crops had not produced heavy mortality.
The next drought soon arrived. It produced a famine of great
magnitude and eventuated in an enquiry on a large scale which
inaugurated a new era.
The famine of 1876-8 resulted from two deficient monsoons and
affected not merely rice areas but also tracts which were largely
covered by dry crops. It lasted long, covering much Madras territory,
part of the Indian states of Mysore and Hyderabad, and the Bombay
Deccan, affecting also the Nor th-Wes tern Provinces and Oudh. The
policy of the central government was to spare no efforts to save the
population of the distressed districts, but not to attempt the task of
giving general relief to all the poorer classes of the community.
Agreed principles and methods of relief had not yet been formulated;
operations were not conducted on any uniform plan; and in many
tracts private trade was seriously hampered by imperfect communica-
tions, for none of the areas most affected was then traversed by more
than one railway line, while various districts were dependent for food
on cattle transport from certain depots served by the railways. In
Bombay deaths during 1877-8 were 800,000 in excess of the normal
figure, although large relief works had been promptly opened for the
able-bodied, and gratuitous relief was well organised. In Madras the
THE STRACHEY COMMISSION 301
government commenced by importing grain with the object of
keeping down prices, but were checked by the central government on
the ground that trade should not be interfered with. A few large
works were opened; but the majority of the able-bodied were relieved
by smaller works on which wages were much too high. Gratuitous
relief was extravagant, and the viceroy, visiting the presidency in
September, observed that the relief camps were "like picnics". "The
people on them, who do no work of any kind, are bursting with fat and
naturally enjoy themselves thoroughly."^ Lord Lytton saw that
gratuitous relief urgently required efficient administration, and
drafted in extra British civil and military officers from Upper India.
Rain came later on in the autumn and relieved the situation; but a
number of debilitated persons remained on the hands of the Madras
government another year, until the autumn crops of 1878 were ripe.
On II October, 1877, the viceroy wrote to Queen Victoria:
Whilst the Madras famine has cost the Government of India over 10 milHons,
the Bombay famine, under General Kennedy's management, has cost only four
millions, although a much larger saving of human life has been effected in Bombay
than in Madras.^
The Madras famine was otherwise remarkable for the fact that
charitable contributions amounting to jCjSyOOO flowed in from Great
Britain and the colonies.
Lytton's government decided that famine relief called for clear
thinking, and appointed a strong commission under General Sir
Richard Strachey, which reported in 1880, formulating general prin-
ciples and suggesting particular measures of a preventive or protective
character. It recognised to the full the duty of the state to offer
relief to the necessitous in times of famine, but held that this relief
should be so administered
as not to check the growth of thrift and self-reliance among the people, or to impair
the structure of society, which, resting as it does in India upon the moral obligation
of mutual assistance,^ is admirably adapted for common effort against a common
misfortune.
The great object of saving life would be far better secured if proper
care were taken to prevent the abuse and demoralisation which, all
experience showed, resulted from ill-directed and excessive distribu-
tion of charitable relief In this spirit a provisional famine code must
be framed which the local governments would adapt to the circum-
stances of their provinces and would in future administer subject to
financial control from the central government.
Starting with these premises, the commission insisted on the urgent
need of proper statistical collection of facts relating to the condition
of the agricultural community. The opportunities for such collection
^ Letters of the Earl of Lytton, n, 79. 2 jfj^fn, p. 82.
* Cf. Fuller, Indian Life and Sentiment, p. 202.
302 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE POLICY
offered by the revenue system in all provinces except parts of Bengal
and Sind had been imperfectly utilised. Relief, too, should everywhere
be administered on certain basic principles.
(a) Employment on works must be offered before the physical
efficiency of applicants had been impaired by privation. All applicants
must be received, but self-acting tests of wages and labour must be
enforced in order to prevent the earth-works from attracting labourers
who were not really in want, but out of work merely because at a
particular season there was little to do in the fields. The works should
be of permanent utility and capable of employing a considerable
number of persons for a considerable period. Wages should be adjusted
from time to time so as to provide sufficient food for a labourer's
support, allowing him a day's rest in the week. Separate rates should
be prescribed for different ages, sexes and classes; and allowances
must be made for dependent children of labourers. A margin should
be left to prevent accidental error on the side of deficiency. Over the
larger works which would be directed by engineers of the public
works department, district officers should exercise general super-
vision, deciding questions relating to tasks and wages, opening or
closing of works, and all arrangements except those of a technical
nature. Such works as excavation of ponds in villages and raising
embankments for water storage might be carried out under the
management of the ordinary district staff for the purpose of employing
persons unfit to be dispatched to the larger works. Arrangements
must be made for providing the latter with huts, temporary markets
and hospitals. Great care must be exercised to avoid throwing work-
people out of ordinary employ; and if drought merely produced
severe scarcity, it would probably be sufficient to enlarge ordinary
public works in such a manner as to afford additional employment.
(b) Only of late years had the government recognised that
gratuitous relief was the duty not of the general public but of the
state. Two systems prevailed; raw grain or money might be dis-
tributed in villages, and cooked food might be given at centres subject
frequently to the condition of residence in a poorhouse or temporary
camp. The latter form of relief was very unpopular. In the North-
Western Provinces and Oudh many had died rather than accept it.
It could only be a reserve line of defence. Gratuitous relief in villages,
however, required very careful organisation and control. For this
purpose distressed tracts must be divided into circles, and each circle
must be placed under a competent oflficer who would be drawn from
the district staff. Non-officials might be asked to volunteer assistance.
Committees of Indian gentlemen would gladly assist in distributing
relief to purdah-nishin ladies.
{c) Government should, as a general rule, trust private trade to
supply and distribute food, giving it every possible facility. It should
prohibit export of grain only if reasonably certain that such action
PRINCIPLES OF RELIEF 303
was necessary to conserve the resources of India as a whole (as was
done in 1 91 8). As railways multiplied, the country was becoming
better and better able to feed itself. There were strong objections to
storage of grain by the government, and there was abundant private
storage. It was, however, important that supplies of food in distressed
areas should be carefully watched.
{d) The commission made suggestions in regard to suspensions and
remissions of land-revenue and rents. In times of famine landlords
should be encouraged and assisted by loans on easy terms to open
works on their estates which would offer employment to labourers
and poorer tenants. Loans should also be given for purchases of seed
grain and bullocks.
(e) The cost of relief must be so localised as to bring home to its
administrators a sense of personal responsibility for expenditure. The
sense of responsibility would be most effectually quickened by throwing
the burden of famine expenditure on to local taxation, and adminis-
tering relief through representative members of the tax-paying body,
themselves responsible for providing all needful funds, but this system
would involve the assumption that the various provinces were, on the
whole, equally well qualified to bear their own burdens, an assump-
tion contrary to fact. There was always a limit beyond which pro-
vincial revenues could not supply famine relief and must be assisted
from imperial funds. In ordinary times, too, the central government
should assist local governments to undertake water-storage and other
protective works, even if such enterprises seemed unlikely to yield
immediate profit.
(/) In times of excessive drought facilities should be afforded for
the migration of cattle to grassy forest areas where abundant pasturage
was procurable.
The commission estimated that the largest population likely to be
affected by famine at one time was thirty millions. They held that
great uncertainties surrounded all estimates of degrees of failure of
crops and that in forecasting consequences attention must be paid to
the antecedent and existing circumstances of the areas affected. The
classes which suffered most from famine were the cultivators and
labourers who were thrown out of employment, the artisans and
petty traders deprived of profits mainly derived from dealing with
the poorer classes, aged or weakly dependents, and public beggars
who found the springs of charity drying up.
The commission's proposals were generally accepted, and steps
were taken to create new resources by which in normal times a surplus
of revenue could be secured to meet the extraordinary charges thrown
on the state by famine. Experience provided a basis of calculation,
and, after correspondence with the secretary of state in council, it was
eventually decided that 15,000,000 rupees would always be entered
in the budget under the head "Famine relief and Insurance", with
304 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE POLICY
sub-heads for relief, protective works and reduction of debt, or
prevention of debt which would otherwise be incurred for the con-
struction of railways and canals. When Lord Gurzon's second budget
was framed arrangements were made to charge against this insurance
fund only works designed and executed exclusively as protection
against famine.
In 1883 the provisional Famine Code was promulgated. It formed
a guide and a basis for the various provincial famine codes which were
subsequently prepared, approved by the central government, and
revised again and again as experience widened. The first chapter of
these codes prescribed precautions to be taken in ordinary times. The
second gave instructions to be followed when a relief campaign seemed
imminent. The remaining chapters described the duties of all con-
cerned when it had actually begun. Districts might be declared by
local governments either "scarcity" or "famine". "Scarcity dis-
tricts" would be those less acutely distressed and would require less
general relief. They might or might not develop into "famine dis-
tricts ". In any case they would be divided into relief circles organised
in the manner suggested by the 1880 commission. The codes enjoined
the immediate preparation and careful maintenance of district
programmes of relief works. Projects for the larger works, which would
be the backbone of relief, would be prepared in detail by the public
works department. The codes dealt thoroughly with other matters
which had been the subjects of the commission's recommendations.
The district is and must always be the unit of famine relief; and it
is worth while to sketch briefly the preliminaries and development of
relief measures in a stricken district.
We will say that in a certain September the district officer (the
writer has served through two famines, once as district officer and
again as commissioner) recognises that the monsoon has failed to a
disastrous degree, that the autumn crops have largely perished, and
that the sowing of the winter crops on the hard dry ground will be
largely impossible. He consults his copy of the provincial famine code
and examines the programmes of relief works which, in obedience to
its provisions, have been prepared and revised by his predecessors.
He looks up the records of any previous famine which may have
visited his district, calls for reports from subdivisional officers or
tahsildars^ and journeys to the tracts which cause most anxiety, in-
forming his commissioner of his plans and views. That officer com-
municates with the local government and will take an early oppor-
tunity of inspecting the precarious region himself, but may have other
threatened districts to visit. As the shadows lengthen, the district
officer will have to revise his programme of relief works, for his charge
may measure 3000 or 4000 square miles, and will contain wet and
dry areas; the rainfall has been uneven; the subdivisions are affected
in varying degrees. All the requirements of particular localities cannot
DISTRICT FAMINE WORK 305
have been foreseen, and the district engineer must be carefully con-
sulted. Some new projects for roads and water-storage works must
be considered and prepared. Estimates too must be dispatched to the
commissioner forecasting the degree of crop failure, the consequent
suspension of land-revenue, the amount of advances {takavi) required
for assistance to occupiers of land, who are anxious, wherever prac-
ticable, to sow and irrigate the winter crops, and the sums required for
relief of all kinds. A rise in crimes against property will be engaging
the attention of the superintendent of police, and outbreaks of epi-
demic disease will demand special efforts on the part of the civil
surgeon. These officers will be touring from time to time and keeping
in touch with their subordinates in rural areas. Letters to the district
officer are arriving from the commissioner, frequently enclosing orders
from the local government who will allot funds and sanction necessary
expenditure.
In most provinces the district officer will find his relief circles ready
made. His tahsils or subdivisions are already split up into circles
presided over by inspectors of village records (kanungos) who move
constantly about and look after the work of the patwaris (village
accountants). The village headmen, assisted by the latter, prepare
lists of infirm and needy persons likely to require gratuitous relief
which are checked by the kanungos. The totals are collected, scru-
tinised by tahsildars and subdivisional officers, and laid before the
head of the district. That officer will call a public meeting for appeal
to the charitable and will make arrangements for the immediate
distribution oi takavi advances.
"Scarcity" is declared in our district. Test works are opened which
attract increasing numbers, although by far the great majority of the
cultivators are sticking persistently to their fields, ploughing, sowing,
watering, sinking temporary wells wherever practicable, with a
courage and perseverance beyond all praise. Perhaps some fall of
early winter rain relieves the whole situation and postpones or
mitigates calamity. But this cannot be relied on ; and if it does not
come, signs of distress speedily increase and "famine" is declared.
Then the whole machinery contemplated by the code comes into
operation, and everything depends upon efficiency of organisation and
supervision. One problem succeeds another rapidly for thousands
come on to the relief works, many with babies and children ; and it is
almost impossible to discriminate between genuine dependents of
workers and others. In the 1908 famine the government of the United
Provinces decided to discontinue relief of dependents on works, as far
as possible, for this reason, preferring to transfer them to their homes.
But this cannot always be arranged, and in any case the timely relief
of thousands in their homes by doles is most difficult to arrange and
control. Cholera too may at any time visit one of the large works,
when, unless careful arrangements are speedily made, a panic-
3o6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE POLICY
stricken crowd will disperse in all directions, some bearing with them
deadly contagion. At all times the condition of the children calls for
particular attention. Care must also be taken, as far as possible, to
save the cattle; or else even when rain comes, ploughing will be
extremely restricted. These are only some of the problems which assail
the over-burdened district staff. Extra assistants are drafted in ; but
the local government may be struggling with the needs of twenty
districts or more, and the central government may be perplexed by
the conflicting claims of three or four provinces. The commander-in-
chief is appealed to and assists with the invaluable loan of some junior
military officers. Months of trial and anxiety pass by. If the district
adjoins an Indian state, crowds of immigrants may pour in. The
commissioner, moving about in his division, acts as adviser, friend
and referee. The head of the local government comes to see for
himself how things are going. At last the hot weather comes to an
end; the rains burst; the labourers on the relief works disperse with
valedictory doles; agricultural operations are resumed, and soon
relief is no longer required.
But in the meantime privation and disease have taken their toll;
the provincial finances have been badly strained; and despite an
elaborate system of accounts, the immense opportunities of pecula-
tion, which large expenditure on famine relief offers to numbers of
subordinates, have not been entirely lost. In fighting famine vigorous,
effective, unceasing supervision by officers of the superior services is,
from every point of view, absolutely essential. The difficulty of
securing this can be appreciated by remembering that sometimes
twenty districts or more, and many millions of people are affected.
In the great famine of 1 899-1 900 Lord Curzon regretted that more
superior and subordinate officers had not been available and re-
marked that the provinces not afflicted had been "literally scoured
for the loan of men". The Indian states had "escaped a disastrous
breakdown only through the administrative knowledge, unflagging
energy and devotion of British officers lent to them".^
Between 1880 and 1896 minor droughts in different provinces
afforded opportunities of testing and revising the provincial codes.
In 1896-7 came a grave failure of the rains affecting 225,000 square
miles in British India and a population of sixty-two millions. The
tracts severely distressed measured 125,000 square miles with a popu-
lation of thirty-four millions. The North-Western Provinces and
Oudh, Bihar, the Central Provinces, Madras, Bombay, the Panjab,
Berar, suffered in varying degrees. In the North-Western and Central
Provinces extensive relief operations were undertaken. The famine
was followed by searching enquiries from a commission presided over
by Sir James Lyall, ex-lieutenant-governor of the Panjab, who found
it most difficult to compare degrees of distress with those observed
^ Raleigh, Lord Curzon in India, p. 386.
THE FAMINE OF 1900 307
in previous famines as conditions had largely altered with expansion
of railways. But improved supervision and organisation had certainly
reduced the cost of relief to a figure below that which might have
been anticipated. The commission adhered largely to the views
expressed by their predecessors in 1 880, suggesting alterations which
were designed to impart greater flexibility to the maxims then adopted.
They observed :
It may be said of India as a whole that of late years, owing to high prices, there
has been a considerable increase in the incomes of the landholding and cultivating
classes, and their standard of comfort and expenditure has also risen. With the rise
in transfer-value of their holdings, their credit also has expanded. During recent
famines they have shown greater powers of resistance. The poorer professional
classes suffer severely from rise of prices but do not come on relief. The wages of
day labourers and skilled artisans have not risen. The rise in prices of food has not
been accompanied by a rise in the wages of labour. On the contrary, as com-
petition falls off, the rate of wages offered falls frequently below the customary
rate.^
Before the proposals of the 1 898 commission had been fully con-
sidered by the government, India was visited by a drought the greatest
in extent and intensity which she had experienced for 200 years. The
area affected amounted to over 400,000 square miles with a popula-
tion of about sixty millions, of whom twenty-five millions belonged
to British India and the remainder to Indian states. It embraced the
greater part of the Bombay Presidency, the Central Provinces, Berar
and much of the Panjab, the states of Kathiawar and Rajputana, the
Nizam's dominions, Baroda and the Central Indian principalities.
The loss in crops alone amounted to ^50,000,000 in British India and
5^30,000,000 in the Indian states. Water supplies shrank considerably;
and a fodder famine on an enormous scale was followed by a positive
devastation of all kinds of cattle. Some of the tracts which had suffered
in 1 896-7 suffered even more now. Speaking to his legislative council
on 19 October, 1900, the viceroy estimated that one-fourth of the
entire population of India had come to a greater or less degree within
the radius of relief operations. Lord Curzon had followed relief
measures with devoted attention, touring in the worst districts of
Gujarat, one of the areas most afflicted, in the fierce heat of July, 1900.
By that time, as he said, famine had brought "its familiar attendant
Furies in its train, and cholera, dysentery and fever had fallen upon
an already exhausted and enfeebled population ".^
The relief campaign was conducted on a very liberal scale. The
ratio of relief in June and July, 1900, was 18 per cent, in the famine-
stricken area of British India as compared with 10 per cent, in 1897;
637 public officials were specially deputed to famine duty from civil
and military employ; provinces not affected were scoured for the loan
of men. Revenue was freely suspended and remitted. Large loans
* Famine Commission's Report, p. 363.
^ Raleigh, op. cit. pp. 375, 404. Gf. Ronaldshay, Life of Curzon, vol. 11, chap. v.
3o8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE POLICY
were made to the Indian states as well as to land-holders and culti-
vators in British territory. Following the advice of the 1 898 com-
mission, the government adapted its relief system more dexterously
to varying circumstances. In British India there was an excess
mortality of 750,000 persons, 230,000 of whom at least died of cholera
and smallpox. Fever also claimed its victims. All the figures included
immigrants from Indian states where, in spite of many bright examples
of benevolence and humanity, the standard of relief generally was
lower than that in British territory; 140 lakhs of rupees (nearly
3(^1,000,000 sterling) were contributed for charitable relief, of which
88| lakhs came from the United Kingdom. In 1896-7 the United
Kingdom had given 123 out of 137 lakhs. Australia, the Straits
Setdement, Ceylon and Hongkong, the United States of America,
Berlin, had also subscribed. From the 137 lakhs distributed by the
Central Relief Committee 1 1 1 went to purchasing cattle, seed and
subsistence for peasants in British territory who were not reached by
the government loans. Fifty lakhs were given for similar purposes to
the Indian states. In 1900 the rains were satisfactory; prospects
rapidly mended; revenue was remitted on a liberal scale; another
commission was appointed to investigate particular questions in
the light of recent experiences. A famine, Lord Curzon said, was a
natural visitation in its origin, but should be a very business-like
proceeding when once it had started. More should be done by way
of precaution. District programmes of relief could be prepared with
greater method and should not be considered complete until every
possible scheme of irrigation or water-storage had been examined.
So terrible an incident as this famine was "an abiding landmark in
the history of the Indian people", and imposed very heavy responsi-
bility upon the government.
The commission then appointed met under the presidency of
Sir Anthony (afterwards Lord) MacDonnell, who had steered the
United Provinces with distinguished success through the recent
famine. Their report published in 1901 clearly summarised accepted
principles of relief, suggesting variations. They emphasised the benefits
of a policy of "moral strategy", early ascertainment and publication
of suspensions of revenue and rents, early distribution of advances for
purchase of seed and cattle and the sinking of temporary wells. They
advocated the appointment of a famine commissioner in a province
where relief operations promised to be extensive. They recommended
stricter regulation of famine relief in certain respects, efforts to enlist
non-official assistance on a larger scale, and preference in particular
circumstances of village works to the large public works which had
hitherto been the backbone of relief schemes. These suggestions com-
mended themselves to the central government and bore fruit in the
provincial famine codes. The commission also advised a considerable
increase in rolling stock at the cost if necessary of the famine insurance
THE MACDONNELL COMMISSION 309
grant. The railways, they said, had been unable to carry much of the
food and fodder offered to them during the famine. The central
government, however, held that possibly the unavoidable limitations
in the carrying capacity of the lines was the main cause of blocks in
traffic.
The commission dealt fully with allegations that the land-revenue
demand was excessive and gave reasons for holding it to be very low
in comparison with the share of the produce to which the government
was traditionally entitled.^ But they considered that as the savings
of good years were often rapidly spent, more indulgence in collection
should be shown in bad years. Agricultural banks should be estab-
lished ; irrigation works should be pushed on ; water-storage must be
more sedulously encouraged; measures should be taken to foster
improved methods of agriculture.
The development of village credit associations and the practica-
bility of a wide extension of irrigation had already been engaging the
government's attention. No time was lost in considering and acting
on the other recommendations of the commission. Before Lord
Curzon left India he had done more to prevent and combat famine,
than any two of his predecessors or successors.
The last considerable famine of our period visited the United
Provinces in 1907-8 and disclosed some changes in economic con-
ditions. In consequence of a failure of the south-west monsoon of
1907, which averaged only one- third to one-quarter of the normal
fall and came as a climax to more than one bad or indifferent season,
the loss of autumn food grains was estimated as approximating in
value tO;(^4,ooo,ooo. Industrial staples suffered even more. The actual
failure of the autumn harvest was greater than and that of the spring
harvest was as great as the losses in 1896-7. The range of prices was
higher. The situation was not relieved, as in 1896, by an unusually
early fall of winter rain. Yet on 25 January, 1908, the lieutenant-
governor. Sir John Hewett, was able to describe the situation in the
following terms :
Why if the provinces have suffered so much as this, do we not see the outward
signs that are associated with famine? Why are we not brought into contact with
people in a state of emaciation? Why do we not see bodies of persons in search of
work? Why do the crime statistics of the province not show a serious rise? Why
again if the calamity of to-day is so like that of eleven years ago, do we find such
a change in the statistics of famine relief? Let us compare the figures for the two
periods. By this time in 1897 there were 16 districts in which famine relief was in
full swing while 24 were under observation and test; there were 480,000 persons
actually on relief works, 43,000 on test-works, 123,000 being relieved as dependents
of workers, 98,000 in receipt of gratuitous relief in their houses and 51,000 in poor-
houses; in all some 796,000 persons were relieved. At the present time there are
3 1 1 ,000 persons receiving different forms of relief. There are only 1 3 districts that
have been declared famine districts, and the workers on relief works number
152,000. We have 11 districts in which test-works are opened, but these are
^ Cf. resolution by the governor-general in council, 16 January, 1902, published in
the Gazette of India, 18 January, 1902.
310 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE POLICY
attracting only about 5000 persons. We have 29,000 dependents of workers being
relieved on works. On the other hand we have 26 districts as compared with 34 in
1897, in which gratuitous relief is being given to persons at their homes and the
number in receipt of such relief in their homes is actually larger than it was in 1897.
The character of relief has undergone a considerable change. . . . The causes of
this change of policy must be sought for in the changed circumstances of the present
time.
The changed circumstances were mainly these: not only had
railway mileage in the provinces increased 35 per cent, within eleven
years ; not only had canal irrigation expanded to an equally marked
extent, but an established era of higher prices had brought a con-
siderable rise in wages. Employment too had increased. Government
expenditure on all forms of public works had been very large ; and
the industrial and building operations of the general public had
greatly extended. The labouring classes had become far less dependent
on agriculture than they had been in the past. Emigration had
very greatly increased, both overseas to British colonies and inland
to mills and factories in Calcutta and other commercial centres.
Increasing amounts of money had been received through postal orders
from abroad for payment to residents of certain eastern districts now
famine-stricken. In some districts the value of the postal orders
received from abroad exceeded the total land-revenue demand.
Labour was yearly becoming dearer and the cultivating classes were
better off. But the high prices of food grains, while benefiting agri-
culturists, were pressing heavily upon dwellers in towns with fixed
incomes. And so it was that while the calamity of 1907-8 was far
less a labourer's famine than had been anticipated, gratuitous relief
was distributed widely in circumstances not contemplated by the
MacDonnell commission who had allowed for it only in tracts where
relief works had been started.
As soon as the failure of the monsoon became apparent, the local
government had adopted whole-heartedly the policy of moral strategy
recommended by the MacDonnell commission. The late Sir John
Campbell was appointed famine commissioner. Prompt assistance
was given by extremely liberal money advances for the preparation,
sowing and irrigation of the winter crops, and by the announcement
of large remissions and suspensions of the autumn instalments of land-
revenue. All these measures gave heart to the people, mitigated
restriction of credit, provided occupation in the villages at remunera-
tive rates of wages and prevented a rise in crime. The winter rains
arrived late; and there was a much greater and more continuous
demand for labour for irrigating the young winter crops than there
had been in 1896-7, a circumstance which contributed to keep down
the numbers on relief works. When the latter were opened, village
works managed either by district officers or by landlords, assisted by
partly repayable grants, took, as far as possible, the place of large
relief works under the management of the engineers of the public
THE SCARCITY OF 1918 311
works department. When the hot weather of 1 908 began every effort
was made to continue these arrangements in order to avoid the
crowding and risks of epidemic disease which large works involve and
to bring relief as near to the homes of the cultivators as possible. The
total number of persons on relief of all kinds on 14 March, 1908, at
the commencement of the spring harvest was 1,411,576 of whom
1,040,476 were on works, 369,344 were receiving gratuitous assistance
and 1756 were weavers who from the nature of their occupation
needed special kind of help. After the spring harvest the numbers on
relief considerably declined. The monsoon of 1908 broke early and
soon enabled operations to be closed. The provincial death-rate from
September, 1907, to July, 1908, was 36-47 against a normal figure of
32*59. The principal causes of death were fever, cholera, and small-
pox. The total cost of famine relief was £2,135,000. The local govern-
ment was congratulated by the central government on "the foresight
displayed at each stage, on the promptitude and efficiency of action
taken, and on the success which attended it".
The next period of stress began ten years later, when India had
reached the beginning of the fifth year of the great war. From 191 3
she had been favoured by good monsoons; but in 191 7 the shortage
of shipping and the shrinkage of rolling stock owing to military
demands, had produced some disastrous results. The cultivators could
not market their grain satisfactorily and had to pay dearly for im-
ported commodities such as spices, oilcloth, kerosine and salt. In
large towns foodstuffs and indeed all commodities became much
dearer. The position of the labouring classes deteriorated although
wages had risen. Early in 191 8 came the German offensive in the
West, the raising of a large additional body of Indian troops, and a
great effort to meet the increased demand for army supplies and
munitions of war. Foodstuffs were purchased by the government on
a large scale ; and before long the rise of prices was intensified by the
weakness of the south-west monsoon all over the sub-continent.
Prolonged breaks damaged the crops, and the rainfall was 19 per cent,
below the average. An extremely severe, widespread and deadly
epidemic of influenza added to general distress. From the beginning
of the war the government had been compelled to interfere with the
normal course of trade for the purpose of satisfying the needs of India,
the Empire and the Allies, of controlling dealings with neutral
countries and of prohibiting traffic with enemy countries.^ Early in
November, 1918, the Armistice enabled them to apply to the relief
of distress in India machinery contrived for the purchase and ship-
ment of rice from Burma. Through the Home Government they
arranged for purchases of wheat from Australia to tide over the
interval which must elapse before the spring crops of 19 19 came into
the market; and they prohibited export of food grains from India
^ See Moral and Material Progress Report, 1917-18, p. 91.
312 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE POLICY
except in very small quantities and for exceptionally strong reasons.
All these measures, combined with the fact that for ten years the
monsoons had been generally kind, carried the country through a
critical time. Relief measures were taken under the Famine Codes
but never at any time did the number of relieved exceed 600,000.
Distress ended with the abundant rains of 191 9. The author of^ India
in ig20 observes that the manner in which the crisis was surmounted
showed increased powers of resistance among the masses, although
the high range of prices must have caused much silent suffering.
Experiences since 191 9 point to the conclusion^ that agricultural
labour is in a stronger and more independent position than it was at
the beginning of this century ; but the high prices of modern times
have hit the middle or professional classes hard. "With their small
fixed incomes, their large families and their increasing expenditure,
they have of late years passed through a very disadvantageous epoch ",2
a circumstance which has stimulated political unrest.
Our tale is told. Twenty-four years ago Lord Curzon said to his
legislative council : ^
We may compete and struggle with Nature, we may prepare for her worst
assaults, and we may reduce her violence when delivered. Some day perhaps when
our railway system has overspread the entire Indian continent, when water storage
and irrigation are even further developed, when we have raised the general level
of social comfort and prosperity, and when advancing civilisation has diffused the
lessons of thrift in domestic expenditure and greater self-denial and control, we
shall obtain the mastery. But that will not be yet. In the meantime the duty of the
government has been to profit to the full by the lessons of the latest calamity and
to take such precautionary steps over the whole field of possible action as to prepare
ourselves to combat the next.
Time has gone on since these words were uttered ; the Indian railway
system has been widely extended; water-storage and irrigation have
greatly developed; in 1904 an act was passed authorising the forma-
tion of co-operative credit societies, and in 191 9 there were 31,800
agricultural credit societies in British India with a total working
capital of nearly ^{^6,000,000 ; provincial departments of agriculture
have for years been working with a Central Research Institute at
Pusa in Bihar to evolve and distribute better strains of existing crops;
education has become more widely diffused ; emigration has lessened
the pressure on some congested areas;* altogether there is reason to
conclude that substantial progress has been made toward the goal to
which Lord Curzon directed untiring thought and endeavour. The
way, however, is difficult, for between 1881 and 1921 the population
of India rose from 253,000,000 to 319,000,000,^ and we cannot doubt
^ See speech by the under-secretary of state for India, 8 July, 1927, Hansard, pp.
1659-60.
* India in 1924-5, p. 233. ' Seventh Budget Speech, 29 March, 1905.
* Of late years, however, it has considerably declined for reasons apparent from the
publication India in 1923-4, pp. 18, 19.
' Of this total 247,000,000 belonged to British India and 72,000,000 to native states.
Between 1921 and 1931 the increase was iO'2 per cent.
THE OUTLOOK 313
that it is rising still or that it will always be essentially rural. Famines
will come from time to time but will not result from a single failure
of crops, and will be rather work famines than food famines. They
will be periods of unemployment on a scale to call for state relief;
and it will always be necessary for the state to see that the helpless and
destitute are not left to starve. But we may surely think that the day
of isolated experiments and costly blunders has for ever passed. Out
of failures and disappointments has come a broad, deliberate and
well-tested policy, a matured and effective plan of campaign. None
the less will it always be essential that such campaigns should be con-
ducted by devoted and efficient public services, by men equal not
only to the ordinary tasks of administration but to those extra tasks
which are imposed by grave emergencies. To the old battles with
famine many have devoted themselves with unsparing energy, two
notable viceroys, British and Indian officials, missionaries of various
Christian denominations. Some have fallen by the way without a
murmur. 1 May their successors carry on that high tradition!
1 "There stands by the roadside at Jubbalpore a cross with this inscription:
*To the memory of the officers of the Central Provinces who sacrificed their lives to their
duty in the struggle to save life during the great famine of 1 896-1 897'.
"On the reverse side are the names of five members of the Indian Civil Service, one
executive engineer, one police officer, and two lieutenants of the Indian army."
Holland, The Indian Outlook, p. 137.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FINANCES OF INDIA
1858-19 I 8
X HE transfer of the government of India from the East India
Company to the crown brought with it wide-reaching changes in the
financial system of India. By the act of 1858^ it was provided that the
expenditure of the revenues of India should be subject to the control
of the secretary of state in council, and that no grant or appropria-
tion of any part of such revenues should be made without the con-
currence of a majority of votes at the meeting of the council. Though
limited discretionary powers of incurring expenditure were delegated
to the Government of India, the regulations of this act placed on the
secretary of state and his council the final responsibility for the ad-
ministration of finances. In India, the somewhat antiquated financial
machinery had almost broken down under the strain of the Mutiny.
In the reconstruction which followed there was a noticeable tendency
to bring the organisation and procedure into closer conformity with
English practice. The management of the finances had been hitherto
in the collective charge of the governor-general and his council, who
exercised a control, that at times had not proved very effective, over
the expenditure of the presidency governments. In 1859 the first
finance minister was appointed and assumed control over all branches
of public accounts. The whole administration of finance was vested
in the central government, the provincial governments becoming, as
regards expenditure, merely administrative agencies and having no
power of spending without sanction the revenue they collected. The
budget system was introduced, the English model of preparing the
accounts being in general followed. The first budget was presented
for the year 1 860-1 (the Indian financial year ending 31 March), to be
followed in due course by annual statements showing closed accounts.
The main preoccupations of the financial advisers of the Government
of India between the years 1859 and 1873 — which forms the first
stage in the history of the period dealt with — were, after restoring
order in the public accounts, to balance income and expenditure,
and, subsequently, to meet endless demands for improved adminis-
tration and for the economic development of the country. The
Mutiny had involved the government in serious embarrassments.
Some of the sources of revenue had been wholly or partially cut off,
and the heavy military expenditure had been met by constant
borrowings. In all, over ,^42,000,000 had been added to the debt,
^ 21 & 22 Vic. c. 108.
REORGANISATION 315
and the accounts statement of 1859-60 showed a deficit of ^(^7,250,000.
The total debt, which was largely a legacy of the numerous wars in
which the East India Company had been engaged, amounted to
about 5(^98,000,000. The state of Indian finances had excited some
apprehension in England, and it was decided to appoint an ex-
perienced English financier to their charge. The choice fell on James
Wilson, to whom the credit for the reforms carried out was largely
due. Under his guidance, drastic reductions were effected in civil
and military expenditure, while the revenues were enhanced by the
imposition of an income-tax for a period of five years. With prosperous
seasons, the finances rapidly improved and, by 1864, the deficit
disappeared from the budget.
The gross revenue of 1 860-1 amounted to ^^43,000,000. This
income was derived largely from sources which differed materially
from those most common in European countries, a fact which ac-
counted for some of the peculiar features of Indian finance. ^ Under
the revenue system which the government had inherited from its
predecessors the main productive sources, the land-revenue and
opium, were not derived from taxation : of the taxation heads the
chief contributory was the salt monopoly; the ordinary excise,
customs and stamps being comparatively unimportant. Direct taxa-
tion was at first only intermittently imposed. Though an income of
this nature imposed a lighter burden on the public, it was less stable
and more costly to realise than that of countries relying in a greater
measure on taxation for their revenues. The fate of the budget
depended on the course of the monsoon. If the rainfall were favour-
able, the necessarily cautious anticipations of revenue were more than
realised : if unfavourable, the returns from heads such as land-revenue,
opium and salt fell off, and the estimated surplus was converted to
a deficit, often swollen by the extraordinary expenditure called for
by measures of famine relief
The mainstay of the finances was the land-revenue, ^ which, in 1 860,
contributed over 40 per cent, to the total of the gross revenues. From
time immemorial the ruling power in India had been entitled to a
share in the produce of the land. Where there was an intervening
landlord, the Government of India exercised its right by taking a
portion of the rent paid by the tenant. Where the settlement was made
direct with peasant proprietors, it took, as a rule, a portion, either of
the estimated net produce of the land, or of the rental accepted as
fair for the class of soil. The land-revenue, except in permanently
settled tracts, was revised periodically, usually after thirty years, when
an assessment was imposed on land brought under cultivation in the
interim, or an enhancement made in the rate of assessment, if justified
by a rise in rents, or an increase in the value of agricultural produce.
^ Cf. Bastable, Public Finance, bk ii, chap. v.
2 Baden Powell, Land Systems of British India, vol. ii, chaps, i and ii, vol. in, chap. ii.
3i6 THE FINANCES OF INDIA, 1858-1918
The position of part proprietor thus occupied, however historically
or economically justifiable, in practice exposed the state to constant
pressure to reduce its claims. The material condition of the small
holders, due mainly to the density of population and excessive sub-
division of the land, in itself called for caution in enforcing enhance-
ments. Therewasconsequently a tendency towards greater moderation
in revising the assessments, so as to leave in the hands of the cul-
tivators a larger portion of the profits of their holdings. Though the
income from land-revenue shows a fairly steady increase, it was not
in proportion to the rise in the rental value of the land. The ratio of
land-revenue to the total gross income of the state gradually diminished
and at the beginning of the present century had fallen to 25 per cent.
Next in importance was the opium revenue, derived from profits of
the state monopoly of the sale of the drug to China and other coun-
tries, the revenue from opium sold in India being treated as excise.^
The receipts under the former head were of a fluctuating nature,
depending on the character of the crop in India and the price of the
drug in China. The gross income, too, was subject to material de-
ductions, arising out of the purchase of the raw article and its manu-
facture for export. Though the maintenance of the traffic in opium
with China was subject to frequent attack, it survived in much the
same form until 1907, when an agreement was entered into with the
Chinese Government under which that government undertook to
suppress the cultivation of the opium poppy within a period of ten
years, while the Government of India consented to the extinction of
the import of opium into China within the same period.
Of the revenues derived from taxation the salt duty was the most
remunerative. 2 Being an article of local production in certain parts
of India, the tax varied in its incidence and method of collection.
With the improvement of inland communications, the diversity in
rates encouraged smuggling from lower to higher taxed areas, the
suppression of which called for a great increase in the preventive staff*
and so reduced the net receipts. The problem was not satisfactorily
solved until the Government of India was able to obtain control of
the most important sources of supply in the native states. The estab-
lishment of state factories at which salt was sold at a price that in-
cluded the duty rendered it possible to abolish the expensive inland
customs line and fix a uniform rate for all India. The equalisation of
the salt duties was completed in 1882, when a single rate of Rs. 2 per
maund (82 lbs.) was levied, representing an annual tax of about 5^.
per head of population. There were frequent fluctuations in the rate
of duty imposed, but, generally speaking, the tax was raised only in
emergencies and was one of the first to receive the benefit of an
improvement in finances.
In i860 the customs income was derived mainly from a general
* Strachey, Finances and Public Works of India, chap. xiv. * Idem, chaps, xiii, xv.
SOURCES OF REVENUE 317
rate of 10 per cent, ad valorem on most articles imported.^ A smaller
duty of 4 per cent, was levied on many articles of export. As finances
improved, the rate on imports was reduced to 7 per cent, in 1864,
and again to 5 per cent, in 1875; many exemptions being made from
time to time from export duty. With the growth of industries in India,
particularly of cotton manufacture, objections were raised in England
to the form in which this duty was levied on the ground that its
practical effect was to operate as a measure of protection in favour
of Indian manufactures and so conflicted with accepted economic
principles. The main issue was the retention of the duty on cotton
goods which, so long as the Indian home industry was undeveloped,
constituted some 60 per cent, of the total imports. The avowed policy
of the Government of India was to adopt complete freedom of import,
which was carried into effect in 1882 by the abolition of the general
import duties. It was found, however, impossible to forgo this source
of income permanently, and the customs-duties were subsequently
reimposed.
Of the other heads of taxation, the stamp revenue was realised
mainly from fees levied in the form of stamps on proceedings in the
judicial courts and from stamps on commercial documents. The
excise revenue was derived from intoxicating liquors, hemp, drugs,
and opium consumed in India. In 1 860 the receipts were unimportant,
only slightly exceeding a million sterling, but with more careful adminis-
tration, excise became one of the most valuable sources of income.
In India, as in England, the income-tax was first introduced as a
temporary expedient to meet war expenses. ^ The first general tax
was imposed in i860 to restore the finances after the Mutiny, being
levied at the rate of 4 per cent, on all incomes of Rs. 500 or upward,
and at half that rate on incomes between Rs. 200 and Rs. 500. It was
abolished after five years, but in 1867 bad seasons compelled a resort
to direct taxation. An experiment was made with a licence tax on
trades and professions, which was of the nature of a tax on incomes.
In this modified form the proceeds were insufficient to cover the
deficit, and in 1 869 the scope of the tax was enlarged and it was
converted into a general income-tax. As finances improved, this
unpopular form of taxation was dropped. But in 1877-8 financial
difficulties again arose, and no means of raising additional revenue,
except by direct taxation, being considered practicable, it was re-
introduced by the imposition of a licence tax on trades. In 1886 a
further step was taken and a tax was imposed on all incomes derived
from sources other than agriculture. Experience had been gained to
secure the smoother working of the tax and from that time it took its
place as one of the permanent heads of revenue.
The above summary indicates the gradual evolution of the revenue
^ Imperial Gazetteer of India, vol. iv, chap. vi.
2 Strachey, op. cit. chap, xii; Findlay-Shirras, The Science of Public Finance^ chap. xxi.
3i8 THE FINANCES OF INDIA, 1858-1918
system. Starting with a somewhat primitive system under which the
income was mainly derived from rent on land and fiscal monopolies
on opium and salt, the government was able, with the progress of the
country, to develop more elastic sources of revenue realised from
taxation, such as customs, excise and income-tax. Its general aim
being to keep down the incidence of the land-revenue and to reduce
the salt duty to as low a point as its finances permitted, the receipts
from these heads gradually came to bear a smaller proportion to the
gross revenues. As the older sources of economic revenue declined
in importance, they were supplemented by newer forms in the shape
of receipts from railways and irrigation works.
The distractions of wars by which the empire had been built up
left the East India Company little time or money to devote to the
prosecution of public works. Not till near the termination of its
existence was there any serious attempt to make good the short-
comings of the past. The succeeding government found itself faced
with the problem of bringing the country up to date in the matter of
roads, public buildings and the public utility services of a modern
state. Equally imperative was the need for protection against famine
by the construction of irrigation works. The funds required were far
beyond the scope of the ordinary revenues, and, in the absence of
private enterprise, the government was compelled to fall back on the
assistance of foreign capital. Though its fruits have been of incal-
culable benefit to the country, the public works policy imposed a
heavy strain on the finances, and the financial history of the fifty
years following the Mutiny is a record of constant struggle to meet the
obligations incurred and to maintain uninterrupted progress. Ulti-
mately, as will be shown, the commercial services were to prove a
remunerative source of revenue.
In order to secure the essential lines of railway communication the
government, from 1853 onward, arranged for their construction
through the agency of joint-stock companies with an English domicile,
to which a guarantee was given of 5 per cent, on the capital outlay
and half the surplus profits.^ The primary defects of these contracts
were that the companies were relieved of responsibility for the cost of
construction and the only incentive to economy was the somewhat
remote prospect of sharing in the profits. Even allowing for the
necessity of gaining experience in railway construction in India, the
cost was high and for a number of years the payment of interest
charges imposed a considerable burden on the general revenues. In
all, the capital outlay on the railways guaranteed under the earlier
system amounted to some ninety-seven millions. Under the terms of
the contracts the state was able to exercise the right of purchase and
the old guaranteed railways were gradually acquired.
* Strachey, o^. cit. chap, vii; Ghesney, Indian Polity, chaps, xviii, xix; Imp. Gaz.
vol. lu, chap. vii.
FINANCIAL DECENTRALISATION 319
In 1869 it was decided to embark on a policy of construction
through direct state agency, mainly with borrowed capital. Fair
progress was made with the project, but the fall in the gold value of
silver rendered the scheme abortive. The burden of paying interest
on the sterling debt began to press heavily on the state, and there was
a natural reluctance to add to these charges. Borrowings were ac-
cordingly limited to such sums as could be raised in India. But a
railway policy under which the rate of progress was determined by
annual borrowings in a limited market soon proved inadequate to the
needs of the country. It was found necessary to fall back on the
former system of inviting assistance of private companies by the offer
of guarantees, or other forms of state aid. The various contracts
differed widely in their conditions, but the terms obtained were more
favourable than in the earlier contracts. Where a guarantee was given,
the rate in no case exceeded 4 per cent, and the share in the surplus
profits payable to the companies was smaller. The construction of
railways by direct agency was not discontinued, but the tendency was
rather to employ this method for lines required for strategic purposes,
or for protection against famine.
In the construction of irrigation works, the government could look
for even less assistance from private enterprise.^ Nearly all the
important systems were constructed by state engineers, either from
borrowed funds, or special revenues set aside for famine insurance.
On the whole the money so spent proved a very remunerative invest-
ment, quite apart from the indirect advantages accruing to the state
in securing the land-revenue and restricting expenditure on famine
relief. But on the other side of the ledger must be set the growing
charges for interest on capital, the long delays which often supervened
before any return commensurate with the outlay was received, and,
over a series of years, the loss in exchange on the sterling portion of
the debt.
Apart from the rearrangement of the financial relations between
the central and provincial governments, there were no events of out-
standing importance prior to 1873. The system of a highly centralised
financial control, introduced under circumstances previously men-
tioned, had not been found to work well in practice. The provincial
governments, though responsible for the collection and development
of a large part of the revenue, were allowed no discretion in incurring
expenditure, and derived no benefit from the growth of income or
economy in administration. The position they occupied was in fact
something more than that of a department and something less than
that of a government, a state of affairs which inevitably led to friction.
From the Government of India's point of view the situation was
described as one in which "the distribution of the public income
degenerated into something like a scramble, in which the most violent
^ Report of Indian Irrigation Commission, 1903.
320 THE FINANCES OF INDIA, 1858-1918
had the advantage, with little attention to reason".^ From the other
point of view, the Government of India, in endeavouring to control
all items of expenditure over so large a country, had assumed a task
which no central authority had the capacity or knowledge to perform.
A beginning was made in financial decentralisation in 1871, which
was further developed in 1877. The principle adopted was that certain
branches of administration, such as the postal services and railways,
should be treated as wholly imperial and their receipts taken by the
central government. That government, being responsible for the
heaviest charges on the state revenues, retained in its hands the income
from certain main heads, such as salt, opium and customs. The
revenues from other heads, viz. land-revenue, excise, stamps, forests
and registration, were shared in a proportion determined according
to the requirements of the several provinces. From the income de-
rived from their share, the latter met the expenses of the collection
of the revenues and the greater part of the expenses of their civil
administration. The financial arrangements between the central and
provincial governments were for some time subject to periodical
revision, when they were amended according to the state of the public
revenues; but, ultimately, more permanent shares in the divided
revenues were assigned to the different provinces. As originally
framed the system had nothing of a federal character about it. The
object in view was mainly to effect an administrative improvement
by relieving the central office of an impossible burden of work and
freeing the provincial governments from unnecessary interference.
The control over finance was not surrendered, since the central
government was always at liberty to vary the terms of the settlement.
Roughly, the provincial expenditure amounted to one-third of the
imperial. 2
Previously to 1873 currency questions had played little part in
Indian finance : from that date they dominated it. Though an attempt
had been made in 1868 to introduce the sovereign into India, it had
not proved successful and the rupee remained the basis of the currency.
Silver being received without limit when tendered for coinage at the
Indian mints, the gold value of the rupee depended on the gold price
of silver bullion. This value had continued up to 1872-3 fairly con-
stant at about 2J., and fluctuations in exchange had been compara-
tively small. ^ About this time, however, largely in consequence of
the demonetisation of silver, first by Germany and subsequently by
the Latin Union, the rupee exchange began to drop. Its downward
course was for some time gradual, and temporary improvements
favoured a policy of inaction. By 1885 it had fallen to an average rate
of IS. yd. From this point the decline was more rapid and by 1890
* Strachey, op. cit. chap, ix; Hunter, Life of the Earl of Mayo y vol. ii, chap. vi.
* Decentralisation Commission RepKDrt, Pari. Papers, 1907.
' Barbour, The Standard of Value y chap, xii, 1893.
THE FALL IN EXCHANGE 321
it had fallen to i^. 4d. For a brief period in 1891 the decision of the
United States to purchase annually large quantities of silver brought
about a sharp rise to u. 6fi?., only to be followed by a reaction until,
in 1893, the average rate was in the region of is. 2d.^ This depre-
ciation disastrously affected India's finances by increasing the cost of
making remittances to liquidate her gold obligations in England.
These consisted mainly of interest on the sterling debt, guaranteed
interest on the railways or, after their purchase, of the annuity
charges, payment for railway stores, army charges, and furlough and
pension allowances of civil and military servants. They were defrayed
by the secretary of state's selling for sterling rupee drafts on the Indian
treasuries. But so long as the mints remained open to the free coinage
of silver, the sterling amounts obtainable at the secretary of state's
sales could not ordinarily exceed the cost of procuring silver and
remitting it to India for coinage. Each fall in the gold value of the
rupee meant proportionately increased cost in defraying the charges
to be met in England. In 1892-3, when the exchange had fallen to
IS. 2d., the government had to pay 87,300,000 more rupees to meet its
gold obligations, amounting to j^i 6,500,000, than would have been
required had the exchange stood at the same rate as in 1873.
It will now be convenient to outline the main events between 1873
and 1893 which moulded the course of Indian finance. During the
early part of this period India was visited by a cycle of bad seasons
which resulted in partial or total failure of the crops over wide areas
of country. Two famines, one in Bihar and the other in Southern
India, called for expenditure on an unprecedented scale. These and
other minor disasters cost the government in relief operations, or
remission of revenue, over ^^15,000,000.2 A commission appointed in
1877 to enquire into the subject of famine relief recommended that
a sum of ^1,500,000 should be set aside in prosperous years to meet
the cost of these recurring calamities, without further increase of debt.
In years free from famine, the surplus was to be devoted, either to the
paying off of existing debt, or the avoidance of debt by constructing
works, such as railways, the cost of which must otherwise have been
met by borrowing. As the condition of the finances did not admit of
the sum required being set aside from revenue, additional funds were
provided by a fresh cess on land, the imposition of a licence tax on
the trading classes, and by reducing provincial assignments. Wars,
threats of wars, and falls in exchange caused these arrangements to
break down on several occasions, but, as soon as pressure was relieved,
the grant was resumed. The operations under the famine insurance
scheme enabled the Government of India, in addition to meeting
the cost of famine relief, to spend on development projects roughly
jf 5,000,000 from the inception of the scheme up to 1893. During these
* Report of Indian Currency Committee {Pari. Papers, 1893, Accounts, c. 7060).
^ Report of Indian Famine Commission^ 1878.
CHIVI 21
322 THE FINANCES OF INDIA, 1858-1918
years the government was in constant financial difficulties. The
Afghan war which broke out in 1878 proved very costly. Hardly had
the situation improved, when the Government of India was called
upon, in deference to the free-trade views obtaining in England, to
abolish the duty on all imported cotton goods, the import tax on
coarser goods, which formed the main product of the Indian mills,
having been removed in 1879. With the abolition of the duty on these
goods, which provided the bulk of the customs revenue, it was im-
possible to justify the retention of the rest of the import tariff levied
on a number of miscellaneous articles, many of which yielded an
insignificant revenue. It was accordingly decided to abolish all import
duties, except those levied on articles, such as liquor and salt, which
were subject to internal taxation.
From 1885 the government was again confronted with heavy
military expenditure as a result of the threatened advance on India
by Russia, and the operations which terminated in the annexation of
Upper Burma. An increase in the strength of the army and defensive
works on the frontier entailed a steady growth in expenditure between
1886 and 1893. With the limitations imposed on the customs tariff,
it was necessary to fall back on other heads of taxation which promised
to yield the additional income required. In 1886 the licence tax was
converted to an income-tax leviable on all non-agricultural incomes
above Rs. 500, and in 1887 the salt-tax was raised from Rs. 2 to
Rs. 2 J per maund. With the aid of the revenue thus obtained
and by the exercise of rigid economy, a deficit was avoided, but the
income-tax in its new form had not been imposed without a good deal
of opposition, while the enhancement of the salt-tax was open to the
objection that it fell most heavily on the poorest class of the popula-
tion. The fiscal policy at the time was affording a handle of attack to
the newly formed congress party. Though these attacks contained
much misrepresentation, they indicate the growing irritation at the
financial straits to which the government had been reduced, mainly
owing to the neglect to deal with the currency problem. When a fresh
crisis in exchange took place in 1892-3, it became obvious that the
Indian finances could not support the strain of the enormous losses
involved and that a reform of the currency system could no longer
be avoided.
The first proposals to this effect were made in 1878, in which the
Government of India pressed for the establishment of a gold standard
and control of silver coinage: the scheme involved acceptance of gold
in payment of government demands but not its immediate recognition
as legal tender. Though it differed in many of its features from the
system ultimately adopted, the main principle was the same, and
some reform on these lines could undoubtedly have been carried out
more easily at that time than at a later date when exchange had fallen
further and the country was flooded with silver coin. When its pro-
CURRENCY REFORM 323
posals were rejected by the secretary of state, the Government of India
turned its attention to international bimetallism^ as a solution of its
currency difficulties. Its hopes were kept alive by international
monetary conferences, at which the question came under discussion,
and the pronounced desire of other governments to rehabilitate silver.
But the condition into which the finances of India had fallen, and
international currency events from 1890 onward, finally forced the
hands of the government and the secretary of state. The world pro-
duction of silver showed a very decided increase and, in spite of pur-
chases on a large scale by the United States Government, imports into
India were rising. India's trade was becoming disorganised by the
constant fluctuations of silver, and the banking and trading classes
brought pressure to bear on the Government of India to close the
mints and establish a gold standard. There was also a grave appre-
hension that the United States Government might discontinue its
purchases of silver, in which case it was impossible to foresee to what
lower levels the gold price of silver might fall. Proposals were again
submitted for the adoption of a gold standard which were referred
by the secretary of state to a committee of which Lord Herschell
was chairman.2 Its recommendations were carried into effect in
1893-
In accordance with these recommendations the mints were closed
to the free coinage of silver, the government reserving to itself the right
of coining silver as required. ^ It was notified at the same time that
sovereigns and half-sovereigns would be received by government at
the equivalent of Rs. 15 and Rs. 7J respectively, and that gold coin
and bullion would be held in the paper currency reserve as a backing
against notes. No action was taken with regard to making gold coin
legal tender. It was believed that, with the closing of the mints to free
coinage, a scarcity value would be placed on the rupee and, as it was
no longer possible to settle the excess of exports over imports by
sending silver to India and coining it into rupees, settlement would
have to be made mainly through the secretary of state's council
drafts. If the rate of these sales could be kept at about is. 4^. the
rupee, the exchange value of the rupee might be forced to this level.
With the gradual accumulation of gold coin, it was hoped to build up
a reserve which would make the gold standard effective. As soon as
the mints were closed exchange rose to the desired level of is. ^d., but
soon fell to lower rates.* Several factors militated against the imme-
diate success of the scheme. The heavy coinage before and after the
closing of the mints — the government having taken over the silver in
transit and with the banks — had led to a redundancy of silver coin
over currency requirements. The closing of the mints in India and
1 Gf. Barbour, The theory of bimetallism and effects of partial demonetization of silver on
England and India. ^ Report of Indian Currency Committee, 1893 ut supra.
3 Act VIII of 1893. * Gf. Barbour, The Standard of Value, chap. xvii.
21-2
324 THE FINANCES OF INDIA, 1858-1918
the repeal of the Sherman Act in the United States caused a heavy
drop in the gold price of silver, and bullion poured into the country
to be used for commercial purposes, thereby decreasing the demand
for the secretary of state's bills. The rate of exchange continued to
decline with the diminishing value of silver, the average for 1 894-5
being only slightly over is. id. From this point it rose steadily, being
materially influenced by the expansion of the internal and external
trade of the country. These favourable trade conditions tended to
absorb the superfluous currency, thus accelerating the effect of the
closure of the mints. The progress was, however, so slow that the
government seriously considered the possibility of melting down large
numbers of rupees and even of reducing the standard to be aimed at
to IS, 3^. In 1897 there was definite improvement, the average rate
being nearly is. 3^., and by 1898-9 the goal had been reached and
the exchange value of the rupee forced up to is. 4^., though its
bullion value had fallen as low as 10^. At this rate it remained with
minor fluctuations, until circumstances arising out of the war com-
pletely upset pre-existing standards.
Little confidence was felt at the time that the rate would be main-
tained. The feeling of uncertainty was reflected in representations by
the various chambers of commerce regarding the unstable condition
of the currency which was disturbing the trade of the country and
driving away capital. Fresh proposals by the Government of India for
stabilising exchange led the secretary of state to appoint a committee
under the presidency of Sir Henry Fowler to review the situation.^
This committee approved of the closing of the mints as the only
practical method of securing a stable exchange between India and
the countries with which she principally traded. It recommended the
establishment of a gold currency as well as of a gold standard, to
secure which it proposed that the sovereign should be legal tender in
India and that the Indian mints should be open to unrestricted coinage
of gold. The committee was impressed by the view that it would not
be feasible to maintain the gold standard without an actual gold
currency, and, for this reason, it urged the encouragement of the use
of gold in currency. This conviction led it to reject schemes, strongly
supported at the time, of establishing a gold standard without a gold
currency in India. The advocates of these views held that a gold
currency was not wanted in India and that exchange with other coun-
tries could be adequately maintained with a sufficient reserve of gold. ^
The most fruitful of the suggestions of the committee was that any
profit on the coinage of rupees should not be treated as revenue, but
credited to a special reserve to be used for supporting exchange. Its
adoption led to the establishment of the special reserve known as the
Gold Standard Reserve.
^ Rejjort of Indian Currency Committee {Pari. Papers, 1899, Accounts, c. 9390).
2 Lindsay, Ricardo*s Exchange Remedy,
A GOLD CURRENCY 325
The Government of India, acting on these recommendations, passed
an act making the sovereign and half-sovereign legal tender at Rs. 15
and Rs. 7I respectively. ^ The proposal for coining gold in India fell
through, owing to difficulties with the English treasury. The efforts to
put gold into circulation were the reverse of successful. The currency
was not popular, and was continually finding its way back to the
treasuries. The result was that the stock of gold in the Paper Currency
Reserve, where it was held as a backing to notes issued, rose steadily
and the silver reserve came to be inconveniently low. In March,
1900, the stock of silver had fallen to about £3,500,000 and gold had
increased in proportion. So long as the public was unwilling to take
gold, this small reserve of rupees had to maintain the convertibility
of some ;^i8,ooo,ooo of notes. To relieve the strain fresh efforts were
made to force gold into circulation, under which the sovereign went
to a discount. The coinage of silver was then taken up in earnest, the
profits being devoted to building up a special gold reserve. These
were transferred to London and, for the most part, invested in govern-
ment securities.
During the years immediately following 1893 the only events of
financial importance were those connected with the improvement of
the currency. Until there was a definite rise in the rate of exchange,
the main concern of the administration was to balance the budget and
curtail expenditure. In 1894 the general import duty at the rate of
5 per cent, ad valorem was reimposed. The duty extended to cotton
goods, but, to deprive it of its protective character, a countervailing
excise duty was imposed on fabrics manufactured at the power mills
in India.2 Aided by this new revenue and the steady growth of the
ordinary revenues, the government was enabled to tide over the period
of transition to a stable rupee. In 1896-7 Northern India suffered
from a famine of unusual severity which cost over ^£'4,000,000 in direct
relief A frontier war in the following year, involving military opera-
tions on an extensive scale, caused further embarrassment and both
these financial years showed considerable deficits. These, however,
may be described as the last of the lean years ; from this time onward,
owing to the steadiness of exchange, growth of revenues, and improved
receipts from public works, the aspect of Indian finances underwent
an entire change and, with flowing balances, the government was not
only able to reduce taxation but also to provide more adequately for
the public services, the development of which had been retarded by
the enforced economy of the preceding years.
One of the main factors in the improvement of the finances was
that the railways and irrigation works became, about the beginning
of the present century, a source of direct profit to the public revenues.^
1 Indian Coinage and Paper Currency Act, XXII of 1899.
2 Cf. Roberts, History of British India, pt 11, chap. xii.
^ Robertson, Report on the Administration and Working of Indian Railways.
326 THE FINANCES OF INDIA, 1858-1918
In arriving at these results all interest charges, not only on open works
but also on those under construction, were charged against revenue,
as well as annuities for the redemption of commuted capital and
annual outgoings of every description. Many of the older undertakings
had been returning handsome dividends on the capital invested for
a number of years paist, but the profits did not counterbalance the loss
on newer constructions. In 1900 the revenue account drawn up on
the above method showed a small gain, which by 190 1-2 had risen
to three-quarters of a million and in 1904-5 to two millions. The
profits, as in all operations of a commercial character, varied with the
season, and in 1907-8 a loss again was incurred, largely owing to
increased working expenses. In the following year there was a re-
covery and from that time the net receipts became an important item
in the national revenue.
The greatly improved condition of its finances after 190 1-2 enabled
the Government of India to allot funds on a large scale to the provincial
governments for the purposes of education, sanitation and agricultural
development, as well as to reduce taxation. The salt-tax was reduced
by successive stages from Rs. 2J per maund to R i. Incomes
under Rs. 1000 per annum were exempted from income-tax, and, as
a relief to the agricultural population, certain cesses on the land were
abolished. When the periodical settlements with the provinces were
revised in 1904-5, definite shares in the incomes realised within the
provinces were permanently surrendered. This was the first step
towards the grant of fiscal independence to the provincial legislative
councils, some measure of which was essential if any genuine system
of local self-government were to be set up. But in 1907-8 there was
a turn in the tide. The monsoon was poor and the sources of income
which varied with the prosperity of season declined : exports fell off
and an exchange crisis supervened. The Government of India was
further faced with the problem of losing the greater part of its opium
revenue under the terms of the Indo-Chinese agreement of 1907.^
As three-quarters of the opium revenue was derived from the China
trade, this meant that by 191 8 a sum of about ^^3,000,000 would have
to be made good from other sources. To provide for future losses in
revenue, the customs-duties on a number of articles, such as tobacco,
beer, spirits and petroleum, were raised and a higher ad valorem duty
imposed on silver bullion. The seasons following, up to the outbreak
of the war, were prosperous. Revenues from almost all sources showed
increases, and speculative purchases of the exportable opium greatly
reduced the losses anticipated in the receipts from sale of the drug.
In the financial year ending March, 191 1, there was a budget surplus
of nearly £6,000,000, and in 1 9 1 3 an even larger surplus of ;{^7, 600,000.
These large balances excited some criticism of under-estimation of the
revenue; but they left India in a strong financial position when the
* Strachey, India, note to chap. x.
REVENUES AND DEBT 327
war broke out, and enabled the government to meet successfully some
of the difficulties which arose during its early stages.
Figures of revenue have hitherto been sparingly quoted. The rupee
has varied so greatly in value that it is impossible to adopt any fixed
standard for conversion into sterling. Apart from this, owing to
alterations in the system of keeping the public accounts, no compari-
sons of any accuracy can be instituted between the figures of different
periods. But by 191 3-14 the rupee had become comparatively stable,
and the figures of that year may usefully be quoted to illustrate
generally the increase in revenues since i860 and the main sources
from which they were derived.
Revenues of Indian 19 13-14 (in thousands of pounds sterling)
Land-revenue 21,391
Opium 1,624
Salt 3j445
Stamps 5j3i8
Excise 8,894
Customs 7*558
Income-tax 1*893
Forests 2,220
Interest i>352
Post Office and Telegraphs (net receipts) 3*598
Railways (less working expenses) ... 17*625
Irrigation 4*7^3
Military receipts 1*3^9
Other heads 4*3^7
Total ;^85,307
The gross revenue of the country had nearly doubled, but, though
the sources remained much the same, there had been a material
change in their relative importance. The contribution of land-revenue
to the total had fallen to 24 per cent., while the commercial services
were yielding a steadily increasing surplus. The opium revenue had
become unimportant. Though excise and customs had increased in
productiveness, the proportion of economic to tax revenues was still
high. But the pressing demands of the state in war time could only
be met by resort to taxation, and, consequently, in the following years
there was a great expansion in the receipts from excise, customs and,
above all, income-tax.
The total debt after the Mutiny amounted to some ^{^98,000,000,
the whole of which had been borrowed for unproductive purposes and
the interest was a dead weight on the revenues. There were additions
to the debt in 1877-8, as a consequence of the famine of that year and
the military operations in Afghanistan which followed the famine.
Some further debt was incurred in 1896 to 1898, again to meet deficits
caused by famine and war, but, with these exceptions, the great bulk
of the rupee and sterling debt was incurred in connection with the
328 THE FINANCES OF INDIA, 1858-1918
construction of railways and other public works. By a system in-
stituted in 1 880-1, an amount of the ordinary debt, equivalent to the
capital expenditure on public works supplied from ordinary revenues,
or from the famine insurance grant, was transferred to the public
works portion of the debt. As the state of finances improved after
1901-2, larger allotments were made to public works, resulting in a
corresponding reduction of the ordinary debt. In 188 1-2, reckoning
the rupee at is. 4^. for purposes of comparison, the ordinary debt
stood at j(^74,ooo,ooo and the public works debt at ^£"48,000, 000. By
1898-9, the figures were ^63,000,000 and j(^ 169,000,000 respectively.
There were subsequent changes in the method of distributing the debt
between the productive and unproductive heads, but the net result
of the transactions up to the outbreak of the war was that by far the
greater portion of the debt stood invested in public works which more
than repaid the interest due on the capital outlay, while that portion
of the debt which imposed an actual burden on the country had been
reduced to very small limits. The position was summed up by the
finance minister as follows :
Out of a total debt equivalent to ;;(^2 74,000,000 outstanding at the end of March,
1 9 14, only about ;£" 13,000,000 represented ordinary, or unproductive debt. Our
total annual interest charges amounted to some ;^9,250,ooo. Railways and irriga-
tion works in the same year yielded us a return of ;;^ 15,250,000. Thus we had still
left some j{j"6,ooo,ooo of clear revenue from our great undertakings after meeting
interest charges on our entire public debt.^
During the years between 1900 and the opening of the war the
currency system was undergoing further developments, and assuming
a shape somewhat different from that contemplated at the time of the
closing of mints. When that measure came into effect, India's trade
balance could be defrayed, either through the secretary of state's bills,
or remittance of gold to be exchanged into rupees, the only currency
medium which circulated freely throughout the country. The govern-
ment being under an obligation to give rupees or notes in exchange
for gold, a succession of favourable trade balances led to an incon-
venient accumulation of gold in the reserve treasuries. By 1904 it
became apparent that the secretary of state's drawings could not be
limited to his own requirements and must be expanded to meet trade
demands, and council bills were accordingly offered for sale at a
fixed rate without limit. These drafts were met in India in rupees or
notes from the cash balances or reserves. As the latter became de-
pleted, the outgoings were replaced by fresh coinage of rupees. Under
this system the increase of coinage became more or less automatically
regulated, for, so far as practicable, it was undertaken only when trade
demands called for it and to the extent necessary to make good the
depletion of silver in the currency reserves. The profits on coinage,
which, owing to the low bullion value of silver, were considerable,
* The Financial Statement and Budget, 1915-16.
THE GOLD EXCHANGE STANDARD 329
were remitted to London to strengthen the gold standard reserve. To
maintain exchange there were thus cash balances in London, gold
reserves in the paper currency reserve, held partly in London but
mainly in India, and, finally, the gold securities in the special
reserve.
These resources were fully called upon in the exchange crisis of
1907.1 The harvest of that year was a partial failure and the volume
of exports declined; a financial crisis in America had resulted in a
stringency in the London money market. Exchange began to drop
ominously and the situation showed no improvement when the sale
of council bills was altogether suspended. The Government of Lidia
at first showed some reluctance to part with its gold, but, as ex-
change further weakened, the expedient was adopted of selling in
India sterling bills on the secretary of state in London at a fixed rate.
The secretary of state met these bills by drawing on the branch of the
paper currency reserve in London, and then on the gold standard
reserve, and by temporary loans. This method of maintaining a stable
exchange by the issue of what is known as "reverse councils " has since
become an integral part of the currency system. With the return of
normal seasons, the gold reserves in England were replenished by the
sale of council drafts against the rupees which had accumulated in the
Indian treasuries during the period of weak exchange. The experience
of the year 1907-8, which had drained their gold assets to the extent
of some ;(^ 1 8,000,000, had impressed on those responsible for the
finances of India the necessity of large, fluid reserves in London to
meet similar emergencies. Heavy council drawings and the resump-
tion of coinage of rupees on a large scale enabled them to carry this
policy into effect. But the working of the gold exchange standard was
imperfectly understood both in England and India, and the magnitude
of the balances, their utilisation and location became subjects of
criticism from somewhat different points of view in both countries.
A royal commission was appointed to enquire into these matters and
generally into the working of the currency system. The commission
reported in 1914, and in the main found in favour of the system which
had been built up, since it had successfully and at a comparatively
cheap cost established what was of essential importance to India,
viz. a stable exchange. It arrived at the definite conclusion that a
gold standard could be worked without a gold currency and that it
was not advantageous to encourage the use of gold in active circula-
tion. In view of the necessity of strong gold reserves to maintain
exchange, it did not propose that any present limit should be
placed on the gold standard reserve, the location of which it agreed
should be in London. The principal modifications suggested were in
the direction of making the paper currency system more elastic and
^ Keynes, Indian Currency and Finance, chap, vi; Findlay-Shirras, Indian Finance and
Banking, chap. vi.
330 THE FINANCES OF INDIA, 1 858-1918
encouraging the use of notes as an alternative to the more costly issue
of silver coin.^
Though no moratorium was found necessary in India on the out-
break of the war, there was a general feeling of insecurity which was
reflected in a run on the savings bank and an abnormal demand for
the conversion of currency notes into rupees. To restore confidence,
the government offered special facilities for the withdrawal of de-
posits and the encashment of notes. There was a shrinkage of some
jfi 1,000,000 in the gross note circulation, but, as the fears of invcision
proved groundless, the drain on government resources diminished
and by 1916 normal circulation was resumed. It was, however,
found impossible to continue the issue of gold in exchange for rupees
and notes, a sum of nearly ,(^2,000,000 having been paid out in the
first few days of August, 1914. The weakness of exchange which
developed was met by the now accepted policy of offering reverse
council bills for sale and by an undertaking by government to support
exchange to the extent of its resources. ^ The sale of some ^(^8,000,000
reverse council bills sufficed to steady exchange and by the beginning
of 1 915 the rate was approaching its former level. The balances which
had accumulated both in India and in London, where the assets of
the gold standard reserve exceeded j(^2 5,000,000, were strong enough
to meet the strain, and it was no small tribute to the soundness of the
currency system which had been established that it successfully stood
the test of the initial difficulties of the war.
The subsequent problems arose from the larger share India was
called upon to take in financing the outlay on the war, and the in-
creasing demand for her products in allied countries at a time when
the customary methods of paying for her exports had become com-
pletely dislocated. In the five years preceding the war, the balance
of exports over imports, averaging some ^(^50,000,000 per annum, had
been met, partly by the secretary of state's council drafts and pardy
by the import of bullion and gold coin. The strain of the war on her
finances made it impossible for England to part with her gold, while
the production of silver, as the war proceeded, fell off and its price
rose materially. The necessary consequence was to throw in an in-
creasing degree on the secretary of state's council drafts the burden
of defraying the trade balance, with the resultant depletion, in the
absence of sufficient supplies of silver for fresh coinage, of the silver
reserves. As it became impracticable to meet all the trade demands,
the council drafts had to be limited in amount to the rupee resources
of the Government of India, in order to preserve sufficient rupees to
maintain convertibility of the note issue. Coinage was continued so
far as silver was procurable, but its price rose to a point at which the
^ Report of the Royal Commission on Indian Finance and Currency {Pari. Papers, 191 4,
Returns, etc., c. 7236-7) .
* Findlay-Shirras, Indian Finance and Banking, chap. vii.
CURRENCY AND THE WAR 331
bullion value of the rupee appreciated beyond its face value. The
combined result of the insistent demands for his bills and the rise in
the world's price of silver compelled the secretary of state in August,
191 7, to abandon the is. 4^. standard of the rupee and raise the price
of his bills to is. ^d. As silver soared upwards, the rate had to be
raised in proportion, to avoid coinage at a loss and as a safeguard
against rupees being melted down and smuggled out of the country
for their bullion value.
With the expansion of military operations in the East, larger forces
were recruited and equipped in India and there was an ever-growing
demand for material of all descriptions and foodstuffs for the armies
in the field. The disbursements for war supplies and services were
made in India, but the corresponding payments were made to the
secretary of state in England, whose only means of remittance of the
funds locked up in London was by purchase of silver when obtainable.
A stage was thus reached when the balances in London were very
large, while those in India were subject to constant strain and diminu-
tion. The financial history of the later years of the war is one of con-
tinued struggle on the part of the Government of India to raise the
funds necessary to meet the obligations undertaken, and to stave off
inconvertibility of the note issue which was threatened by the absorp-
tion of rupees and the steady depletion of the silver reserves.
Fortunately the country was prosperous; its industries were
flourishing and expanding ; its agricultural and mineral products were
realising high prices. The government was able to raise loans in India
on an unprecedented scale, a new departure being made in the ofTer
of short-dated treasury bills. In the year 191 7-18 the rupee bor-
rowings reached the high figure of £62,000,000, though hitherto the
total rupee debt had amounted only to some ^£'98, 000, 000. In com-
mon with other belligerent countries, the government was compelled
to finance itself to some extent by the expansion of the note issue. ^
As a consequence of the rise in prices and stagnation of the rupee
circulation, due partly to the decline in imports checking the normal
down-flow of silver from the agricultural districts, the currency
became inadequate to the demands of trade and efforts were made,
with a considerable degree of success, to encourage the use of notes
as a circulating medium. The paper currency reserves in London
were increased by the purchase of British treasury bills and an issue
of notes in India was made against this holding. The note circulation
rose from some ^^44,000,000 to ^^58,000,000 by 31 March, 191 7, and
the necessities of the situation compelled a still larger increase in the
following year. Issues were made of notes of small denominations of
Rs. 2 and R. i , which gradually came into use for smaller transactions
as rupees decreased in circulation. In 191 7, and even more in 191 8,
the moving of the big jute and cotton crops was largely financed by
1 Acts XI and XIX of 191 7.
332 THE FINANCES OF INDIA, 1858-1918
notes. The restrictions that government was obhged to impose on
encashment led to notes changing hands at a discount, and full
confidence was not restored until the receipt of large quantities of
silver fi-om America.
In 1914 the paper currency reserve had consisted of ;£" 14,000,000
in silver, ;;(^2 1,000,000 in gold and ^^9,000,000 in securities to back
a corresponding note issue. By March, 191 8, the silver portion had
been reduced to ^£"6,000,000, while securities had risen to ^£"40,000,000,
or 60 per cent, of the reserve. The government had been driven to
war-time expedients to maintain the metallic portion of the reserve.
An ordinance issued in June, 1917,^ required that all gold imported
into India should be sold to government at the exchange rate. Later
on, the import of silver on private account was prohibited so as not
to interfere with the secretary of state's purchases, while the export
of silver coin and bullion was further declared illegal. In spite of these
and other temporary measures, inconvertibility, which would have
been attended by serious financial and political dangers, seemed
inevitable when the silver balance sunk in June, 191 8, to ,(^3,000,000.
At this juncture the situation was relieved by the arrival of the first
consignment of silver from America. The United States Government
had been requested some time previously to release a portion of the
large silver reserve stored in its currency vaults. The negotiations took
time and an agreement was not finally reached until April, 19 18, in
which month an act was passed in congress authorising the breaking
up and sale to allied governments of a large quantity of silver dollars,^
of which some 200 million fine ounces were allotted to India. To
further relieve the strain on the silver balances, the coinage of gold
was undertaken in India. As part of the gold acquired was not in
sovereigns, but in bullion or foreign currency, a branch of the Royal
Mint was established at Bombay for the coinage of sovereigns.^ The
issue did not remain long in circulation, but, as an emergency
measure, it served its purpose of relieving the pressure on the silver
balances.
The embarrassments of the Government of India during the war
were those incidental to an economically backward country in which
the banking system was undeveloped and the people wedded by their
customs to a metallic currency. Intrinsically, the financial position
was sound : the revenues were generally adequate to meet expenditure
and large balances had accumulated with the secretary of state in
London. In the first two years of the war, the dislocation of trade
affected customs and railway receipts, and a falling off of revenue
combined with higher expenditure for frontier defence resulted in
small deficits. In 191 6- 17 the general tariff was raised to 7 J per cent.
1 Under the Gold (Import) Act, XXII of 191 7.
« Act No. GXXXIX, 65th Congress, 1918.
' Bombay Mint Proclamation of 1917.
WAR FINANCE 333
and there were considerable increases in the duties on liquor and
tobacco. In the following year, the import duty on cotton fabrics was
raised to the general tariff level, the excise duty on articles manu-
factured in Indian mills remaining at the previous 3I per cent.
Export duties were also levied on jute and tea. In 1916-17 theincome-
tax was graduated and raised to a maximum of i anna in the rupee
(about IS. ^d. in the pound) on higher incomes. This was followed by
a super-tax which might run up to 3 annas in the rupee on incomes
in excess of Rs. 50,000 per annum. As the demands for Indian products
increased, a trade boom set in, which was reflected in increased
receipts from the more elastic sources of revenue. In 191 7-1 8 receipts
from customs rose to ^^ 11,056,000, from excise to £10,161,000 and
from income-tax to ;^6,3o8,ooo.^ The railway receipts of that year
broke all previous records. The surplus of the year ending March,
1917, amounted to nearly ^^10,000,000, and that of the following year
exceeded this figure. Meanwhile the gold standard reserve had risen
to £34,000,000 in securities and cash at short notice. Though India
prospered during the war, her financial contribution was no less
generous and whole-hearted than her military, for in 191 7 she
proffered a sum of £100,000,000 as a war gift to the home government,
and part of the taxation imposed was to meet the interest on the loans
raised for the purpose of making this subvention.
The revenues at the end of the financial year 191 7-1 8 amounted
to £113,000,000, a large advance on the figures of the first regular
budget. In spite of this increase, there was no considerable source of
central taxation, excluding the super-tax levied at a late stage of the
war, which had not already been imposed in 1 860, and in many cases
the rate of assessment had been lowered. The salt-tax had been con-
siderably reduced, and customs-duties were levied at a lower rate.
Though the income-tax on higher incomes was somewhat heavier,
the minimum taxable limit had been raised and agricultural incomes
excluded from direct taxation. The incidence of the land-revenue per
cultivated acre was lower and, in view of the great rise in the prices
of produce, it imposed a far lighter burden on the occupier of the land.
The increase in total receipts was due mainly to the greater wealth
and prosperity of the country, and the development of the commercial
services which accounted for over 25 per cent, of the gross revenues.
The unproductive debt, which had sunk to the low figure of
£3,000,000 in 1 91 5, had risen under the stress of war to £67,000,000;
but the greater part of the debt, viz. £283,000,000, had been incurred
on works of a productive character. When the period under review
opened, India was almost unequipped with the public utility services
of a modern state, while its finances were liable to be paralysed by the
frequent occurrence of disastrous famines. Without its system of rail-
ways and canals, the commercial and industrial development of the
^ Finance and Revenue Accounts.
334 THE FINANCES OF INDIA, 1858-1918
country, reflected in the increase of its revenues, would have been
impossible; and by the protection they ensured, these undertakings
had so far mitigated the effects of the uncertainty of the weather that
famines in their former severity had become things of the past. The
two outstanding achievements of the era were the financing of these
great public works during a period of great monetary stress and the
stabilising of the currency by the setting up of the gold exchange
standard. The latter not only served its immediate purpose by rescuing
the finances of the state from the depths of depression into which they
had fallen, but, when perfected, permitted of the building up of a
substantial gold reserve without trenching on the ordinary income.
The best evidence of its success was its wide imitation throughout the
East. Commenting on this, Mr J. M. Keynes wrote: "I believe it con-
tains one essential — the use of a cheap local currency artificially
maintained at par with the international currency or standard of
value (whatever it may ultimately turn out to be) — in the ideal
currency of the future".^
^ Keynes, op. cit. chap. ii.
J
CHAPTER XIX
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
1858-1918
i H E Mutiny threw back large tracts of Northern India into anarchy.
In important provinces the law courts were closed for months. When
reorganisation began, the finances of the country were in grave
disorder. Large expenditure was required in all directions; and a
succession of famines occurring at intervals of no long duration
impressed very strongly upon the government the urgent need of
railways, roads and a large extension of canals. Profit from such
reproductive works did not come in at once and meantime various
military needs constantly asserted themselves.^ Sufficient funds for
education were difficult to find ; but had they been abundant, it would
still have been a most arduous task to cause a stream of useful know-
ledge to percolate through the innumerable strata of immense popu-
lations rooted in institutions immemorial in their antiquity and unique
in the complex character of their framework. The contrast between
conditions in England and conditions in India had been clearly
pointed out by Sir Charles Wood in 1853. In the former country
there was every possible stimulus to active exertion, both public and
private, public ambition, private rivalry, large capital, general educa-
tion, and every motive which could make an energetic race urge on
progressive improvements and suffer no prejudices to interfere.
•' In India ", said Wood, "you haveon the contrary a race of people slow to change,
bound up by religious prejudices and antiquated customs. There are there in fact
many — I had almost said all — the obstacles to rapid progress, whereas in this /\
country there exist every stimulus and every motive to accelerated advance."^
Lord Stanley, the first secretary of state for India, lost no time in
turning his attention to the subject of education. In a dispatch dated
7 April, 1859, he summarised all information up to that time received
regarding the results of the policy laid down in 1854 and asked for
more. But his term of office was short; and his letter had hardly
reached India when he was succeeded by Wood, the chief author of
the policy proclaimed in 1854. Stanley's dispatch^ had dealt with all
the main points in issue, laying down that as a general rule appoint-
ments in the department of education should be filled by individuals
unconnected with the civil or military service of the government.
Grants-in-aid for Anglo-vernacular schools had evidently been much
^ Napier, Life of Lord Napier of Magdala, pp. 260-2.
2 Hansard, 3 June, 1853, cxxvii, iioi.
3 Richey, Selections, p. 426; Satthianadhan, History of Education in Madras, Appendix
D, p. xliii.
336 THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
appreciated, but it was generally impossible to procure local support
for the establishment of any new elementary (vernacular) schools.
Educational officers should apparently be relieved of the invidious
task of soliciting contributions for the support of such institutions from
classes whose means were generally extremely limited and whose
appreciation of the advantages of education did not dispose them to
make sacrifices for obtaining it. The means of elementary education
should be provided by the direct instrumentality of the officers of
government according to one or other of the plans in operation in
certain provinces. Teaching in state schools must be entirely secular.
In spite of grave financial difficulties, both Wood, who held office
till 1866, and the governor-general in council were anxious to spare
money for education. The new department in each province con-
sisted of a director, an establishment of inspecting officers, and a
teaching staff rising from masters of primary schools to professors and
principals of colleges. In 1871 control of these departments was made
over to provincial governments, who were given fixed assignments
from central revenues. But the central government kept in touch with
all provincial proceedings and granted additional funds from time to
time. The superior officers were classified in four grades, in Bengal in
1865^ and in other provinces afterwards. The average value of a
graded post was about Rs. 900 a month, comparing poorly with the
salary of the average civil servants of a corresponding position ; but
the work attracted distinguished university men from Great Britain. ^
Graded officers were appointed by the secretary of state, and ungraded
inspectors and teachers by the provincial authorities. Each provincial
government shared its responsibility for higher education with one of
the universities.
These were purely examining bodies. The affairs, concern and
property of each were managed by a senate which consisted of a
chancellor, vice-chancellor and fellows, who were chiefly government
servants. The senate drew up by-laws and regulations for the approval
of the governor-general in council in the case of Calcutta, and of the
governors in council in the case of Bombay and Madras. The universi-
ties awarded "academical degrees as evidence of attainments and
marks of honour proportioned thereto", admitting to their examina-
tions students from colleges affiliated by permission of the local
governments concerned.^ Each university had its separate sphere of
influence. Calcutta presided over higher education in Northern
India, the Central Provinces and British Burma ; Bombay and Madras
rendered the same service to their respective presidencies and to the
native states of Western and Southern India.
* Howell says 1864. But see Report of the Education Commission, 1882, para. 346.
* Fraser, Among Indian Rajas and Ryots, p. 44. See also Howell, Education in British India,
p. 92.
' Report of the Indian Education Commissiony 1882, para. 340.
THE NEW SYSTEM 337
The senates committed executive authority to subordinate syn-
dicates which consisted of small bodies of fellows sitting together with
the vice-chancellors; they also appointed members of the various
faculties, which were four in each university: (i) arts (or general
education) including science, (2) law, (3) medicine and (4) en-
gineering. The faculties elected members to the syndicates and recom-
mended examiners. The dispatch of 1854 had advised the institution
of certain chairs, but Dalhousie had rejected this suggestion, observing
that the universities would be ill qualified to superintend actual
tuition.^ Teaching therefore devolved wholly upon the widely
scattered colleges, government, missionary and private. Proprietary
colleges were being established by private enterprise mainly in Bengal.
Many colleges held classes in school-courses and had been originally
"high" or Anglo-vernacular schools. Some high schools possessed
college classes. The great majority of colleges throughout our period
were "arts" colleges, giving a literary education to students whose
inherited tastes inclined them toward literary courses with govern-
ment service, the bar or teaching as the eventual goal. Two govern-
ment Sanskrit colleges, originally organised as "tols",^ had also
started English departments. There were two colleges of engineering,
established one at Rurki in the North-Western Provinces in 1847, and
the other at Sibpur near Calcutta in 1856; and others were in con-
templation. A class for instruction in engineering and surveying had
been opened in Elphinstone College, Bombay, as far back as 1844.
Medical colleges at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay were doing most
useful work. Law colleges followed later.
For admission to a college or to a college class in a high school,
a candidate must satisfy examiners appointed by the university to
conduct a matriculation or "entrance" examination. An under-
graduate who passed the entrance and wished to proceed to the
degree of bachelor of arts must first for two years read up to a "first
arts" or "intermediate" examination. This test satisfied, he must go
through a course of more specialised study and might then present
himself for the bachelors' examination. The degree of master of arts
was conferred after a further examination, the conditions of which
varied at the different universities. The ordinary age for matriculation
varied from about fourteen to seventeen. Students sometimes gra-
duated at eighteen or nineteen. The great majority did not proceed
to a degree for the course was long, and a certificate of having passed
the entrance qualified a youth to be a candidate for clerical posts in
government service which required some knowledge of English, while
a certificate of having passed the intermediate or first arts was a still
more useful credential.
Colleges were of the first or second grade according as they gave
^ Richey, Selections^ p. 402.
* Cf. p. 10 1, supra.
C H 1 VI 22
338 THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
instruction for the full university course or only for that part of it
which led up to the intermediate. Teaching therein was conducted
in English mainly by lectures and to a far smaller degree by tutorial
assistance. It was presumed that a student admitted to a college after
matriculation came from his high school equipped with a knowledge
of English sufficient to enable him to follow and understand the
lectures. If therefore he was to benefit really from college he must
matriculate with a substantial knowledge of that language. The
entrance must be a real test. If the whole collegiate training were not
to fail in a vital point, the teaching of English in the high (Anglo-
vernacular) schools must be thorough and good. And as these schools
were managed and owned by various authorities, the only hope of
bringing school-teaching up to a satisfactory standard lay in securing
frequent visits from competent inspectors.
Schools admitted within the pale of the system devised in 1854 were
"recognised" by the government and inspected by its officers. There
were various stages in school education, each averaging from two to
three years, and ending in an examination. The schools corresponded
in grade to each of these stages. Those which prepared pupils for the
matriculation were high schools. Teaching here tended, in areas
subject to the Calcutta University, toward neglect of the vernacular
largely because the senate, after first allowing all answers to questions
in geography, history and mathematics to be given in any living
language, ruled in 1 861-2 that all answers in each subject should be
given in English except when otherwise specified. The object was to
ensure that all matriculates should be able to follow college lectures
satisfactorily, but while this object was by no means achieved, study
of the vernaculars materially suffered. In the high schools boys might
be taught in either English or the vernacular. ^ The courses were
predominantly literary, according to the tastes and inclinations of
teachers and taught, and affording large scope for memorising, of
which full advantage was taken. High schools often contained
classes usually associated with schools of a lower grade. Below them
were preparatory "middle English" schools; and there were vernacu-
lar middle schools which did not lead up to any of the openings
provided by university credentials, but afforded opportunities for
further study to boys who were not content with an elementary
education and wished to qualify for vernacular clerical or teaching
posts. Last came the primary schools, either "upper", more ele-
mentary editions of the vernacular middle school, or "lower", which
varied from the old indigenous patshala or maktab, assisted now by a
government grant, to a modern institution. The cost of maintaining
a primary school was met only partly by fees, which were everywhere
extremely low.
Schools of higher and lower grades were connected by a system of
^ Report of tlie Calcutta University Commission^ pt i, chap, xviii.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT 339
state scholarships. "Normal" schools were provided for the training
of teachers in vernacular schools.
Such were the main features of an elaborately organised system.
Outside its pale were many indigenous institutions, of the varieties
described in a previous chapter, where masters and pupils walked in
the old ways asking for nothing from the state. Outside, too, were
denominational and endowed schools for the children of the com-
munity of domiciled Europeans and Eurasians.
The system took time to develop ; and even in the middle 'sixties
British Burma had no regularly organised department of public
instruction. Some idea of early progress in India generally may be
gathered from a "note" on the state of education in 1865-6 prepared
under government orders by A. M. Monteath, secretary to the Govern-
ment of India, which was laid before parliament together with some
critical observations by Sir A. Grant, director of public instruction at
Bombay. 1
The universities, it was said, had supplied reliable tests and stimu-
lated educational institutions. In higher education Bengal stood first.
The largest number and the best specimens of colleges and schools
were to be found there, filled by pupils whose appreciation of the
education received was attested by the considerable amount of fees
paid. In no other province of India were the literary or professional
classes so closely interwoven with the landed classes ; and in no other
province were university credentials so valuable to a bridegroom. So
far Bengal arrangements had prospered; but here their success ter-
minated. The great mass of the people, the labouring and agricultural
classes, had hardly been touched. The old indigenous schools retained
their ground. Various efforts were being made with indifferent success
to mould these into efficient institutions, although some of their gurus
or teachers were induced by stipends to undergo courses of training
at normal schools. In the North-Western Provinces, on the other
hand, while arrangements for education for the higher and middle
classes were meagre and received with moderate enthusiasm, village
schools under government direction, established on the plan devised
by Thomason and assisted by a i per cent, school-rate on all newly
settled land-revenue, were working well and ousting the indigenous
schools the teachers of which were set against reform, desiring "no
assistance which should involve the trouble of improvement".
In British India generally higher instruction was making way, but
primary education was advancing very slowly. It was possible for
zealous educational officers to procure promises of contributions for
the upkeep of village schools, but difficult to collect such contributions,
as interest soon flagged. Missionary help was highly valued. In
Burma the Buddhist monasteries imparted a knowledge of reading
and writing to three-quarters of the juvenile male population, and
^ Pari. Papers, 1867-8, l, i sqq. Gf. Calcutta Review, xlv, 414-50.
22-2
340 THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
the chief commissioner was endeavouring to induce the monks to
accept ordinary school-books for the instruction of their pupils.
Monteath described university conditions. The directors had ordered
in 1854 that the standards for common degrees should be fixed so as
"to command respect without discouraging the efforts of deserving
students", while in the competition for honours care was to be taken
to maintain "such a standard as would afford a guarantee of high
ability and valuable attainments ". Colleges affiliated to the Calcutta
University numbered eighteen in Bengal, ten of which were private,
seven in the North-Western Provinces, three of which were private,
one in the Panjab, one in the Central Provinces, two in Ceylon. In
1 86 1 candidates for the Calcutta entrance examination had num-
bered 1058, of whom 477 obtained admission to colleges. In 1866,
the corresponding figures were 1350 and 638. Of these a solid pro-
portion were assisted in pursuing their university careers by scholar-
ships contributed by the state. Bachelors of arts numbered fifteen in
1 86 1 and seventy-nine in 1866. In Madras affiliated colleges and
schools educating up to and beyond the matriculation standard num-
bered nineteen, eleven of which were conducted by missionary
societies, but the senate admitted students to its examinations without
compelling them to produce certificates from affiliated institutions.
Candidates for the entrance numbered eighty in 1 860-1, and 555 in
1865-6, of whom 229 passed. In Bombay higher education had
progressed slowly. Even in 1866 only 109 candidates passed the
entrance and bachelors of arts were only twelve. There were four
affiliated colleges, three of which were situate in Bombay. But a strong
stimulus had been recently applied by very liberal private donations
from Indian gentlemen totalling Rs. 20,000 in 1862-3, ^s- 47ijOOO
in 1863-4 and Rs. 401,200 in 1864-5.
The education of Muhammadan boys was relatively backward. In
Bengal particularly the Muhammadan community was falling behind
and losing influence.^ There was very little education of girls either
Hindu or Muhammadan. In Bengal English was too freely employed
as the medium of instruction, and this to such an extent as seriously
to retard the progress of the pupils in their acquisition of general
knowledge ; while as regards quality the English taught was not only
rudimentary but curiously faulty in idiom and accent. In the North-
Western Provinces and Panjab English was merely studied as a
language. The neglect of vernacular studies for the purpose of learning
it was strictly prohibited. In Madras the result of attempts made to
carry on instruction through English before pupils had obtained
sufficient grasp of that language had been "failure more or less
complete". In Bombay English education had been starved in the
interest of vernacular education ; but the desire for the knowledge of
English was increasing through a desire to acquire superior qualifica-
^ Calcutta Review, xlv, 441.
WESTERN INFLUENCES 341
tions for government and other employ. This desire was everywhere
the powerful influence which, more rapidly in some provinces than
in others, was moulding the future. Education was in demand mainly
as a channel for employment, and a knowledge of English was the
royal road which led to the most lucrative positions and professions.
The total cost of education in 1 865-6 was estimated at Rs. 8,2 1 7,669,
but of this sum Rs. 4,529,580 only came from imperial funds. The
rest was supplied by local sources "such as education cesses, school
fees, private endowments, subscriptions". But information regarding
expenditure on private institutions was neither exhaustive nor re-
liable. Special rules had been framed to regulate grants-in-aid to
schools designed for the instruction of European and Eurasian
children.
In this connection we may just now particularly recall Lord
Canning's words :
The Eurasian class have a special claim upon us. The presence of a British
government has called them into being;. . .and they are a class which, while it
draws little or no support from its connection with England, is without that deep
root in and hold of the soil of India from which our native public servants, through
their families and relatives, derive advantage.^
The State educational system was only one side of a process which
was rapidly spreading abroad Western culture and ideas. The scene
had indeed changed since the days when crowds assembled, with
the law's permission, to see widows burnt alive, and missionaries
sought refuge in Danish territory, when dacoits exercised a "horrid
ascendancy" over large tracts of country, and "thags" were able to
"glory in their achievements as acts pleasing to a deity ".^ Elaborate
and carefully considered codes of substantive law and procedure,
criminal and civil, were coming gradually into force and were begin-
ning to exercise a powerful influence over thought. In the seaports,
in the provincial capitals, in the historic cities inland, a new India
was growing up, an India of railways and telegraphs, of law courts
and lawyers, of newspapers and examinations. Extending communi-
cations, widening commerce, developing industries were increasing
the European population. The railways were mainly manned by
European officials; road-surveyors, contractors, tradesmen, custom-
house officers were multiplying. Assam and the slopes of the Hima-
layas abounded with tea-planters, Tirhut and Lower Bengal with
indigo-planters. The Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Irawadi, the
Ganges to some extent, and the whole coast from Calcutta to Persia
on the one side, and to the Straits on the other, were navigated by
steamers under British commanders. The seaports and large cities
contained many families of mixed race, many European and Eurasian
* Quoted ap. Croft, Review of Education in India, p. 294. Gf. Calcutta Review, xlii, 57-93.
2 Cf. chaps, ii and vii, supra.
^
342 THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
children whose minds needed rescue from the perils of unrelieved
materialism. ^
The new times were better than the old ; but they had brought many
problems of their own. While the demand for Western education was
widening rapidly among the Hindu professional classes, it continued
to run almost invariably into literary courses, particularly in Bengal ;
and the avenues to government service, the bar, teaching and jour-
nalism were gradually becoming thronged. The land-holders, on the
other hand, who had hitherto been the natural leaders of the people,
were slow to grasp new opportunities; the martial classes, who had
always been held in high social estimation,^ were equally indifferent;
and the masses themselves, in spite of much earnest effort on the part
of educational officers, up to the very end of our period, remained
chiefly and persistently illiterate. Even in 1919, although no longer
hostile to primary education, they were "lukewarm in its support and
seldom pressed for its extension ".^ Only 2*4 per cent, were enrolled
in primary schools, and only 2*8 were undergoing elementary educa-
tion of any kind. Even when allowance is made for the great increase
of population between i860 and 191 8 these figures are impressive.
Mass education was and is mainly a rural problem.* A villager
who sought the law courts hired a petition- writer and a pleader ; if he
visited a shop he ascertained prices by enquiry. On the very rare
occasions on which he wished to send or decipher a letter, he obtained
the assistance of his village accountant or a professional scribe. "The
uselessness of education to such people'*, wrote a school inspector
from the province of Oudh in 1883,
is. proved by the fact, of which there is overwhelming evidence in every town or
village where a school has been established, that the great majority of our ex-
students, in less than 10 years after leaving school, can neither read, nor write, nor
cipher, and that the sharpest among them are not able to do more than compose
a very simple letter, or decipher some 50 words out of 100 in a few lines of print.
From having nothing to read, having no occasion to write, and no accounts to
keep, they gradually forget whatever they learn, and are as ignorant as if they had
never been at school. There is no hope that knowledge will grow from more to more
so long as the daily life of the masses remains destitute of everything which can
afford scope to the utilisation of knowledge or engage the attention of an educated
man.*
The writer based these observations on the assumption that the
agriculturist ex-student remained in his village and followed the
calling of his fathers.
If he goes elsewhere and enters into service or obtains clerical employment he
will find a use for his education. But government primary schools were not started
with the idea of seducing boys from their hereditary callings.
* Calcutta Reiiew, XLii, 49. Gf. Strachey, /m/io, pp. lo-ii.
* Cf. Forbes, Oriental Memoirs^ i, 341 .
» Statement of Moral and Material Progress, 191 7-18, p. no.
* See Burn, Census Report on N.W.P. and Oudh, 1901, p. 160.
^ Nesfield, Calcutta Review, lxxvi, 356. Gf. Statement of Moral and Material Progress,
1925-6, p. 166.
J
PRIMARY EDUCATION 343
It is certain that, while the cultivators often required cow and goat
herds in their open unfenced fields, they had solid reason for sup-
posing that, unless some particular opening presented itself, schooling
would prove an infructuous investment.^ If a parent embarked on it,
he did so in the hope that the boy would make education a stepping-
stone to service of some kind. To this expectation the new village
schools owed such vitality as they possessed. The old indigenous y
elementary schools had been established by particular classes for '\
particular purposes in response to religious or business needs. Their
studies were of the humblest and most conservative character. They
were not looked on as paths to any particularly desirable employment.
The new schools offered fresh possibilities but frequently led to dis-
appointment. A report by J. G. Nesfield, inspector of schools in the
North-Western Provinces, quoted in Croft's Review for the year 1886,2
illustrates this aspect of affairs.
" In one school *', he writes, " there was a boy of the Kurmi caste, which is one of
the most industrious agricultural castes in Upper India. He had passed a very good
examination in the highest standard of village schools; after telling him that he had
now completed all that a village school could give him, I enquired what occupation
he intended to follow. His answer at once was — 'Service; what else?' I advised
him to revert to agriculture, as there was scarcely any chance of his getting literary
employment; but at this piece of advice he seemed to be surprised and even angry.
At another school I met a Pasi, a semi-hunting caste, much lower in every respect
than that of the Kurmi. He was a boy of quick understanding and had completed
the village school course in Nagari as well as Urdu, and could read and write both
characters with equal facility. He asked me what he was to do next. I could hardly
tell him to go back to pig-rearing, trapping birds, and digging vermin out of the
earth for food; and yet I scarcely saw what other opening was in store for him.
At another school there was the son of a chuhar, or village sweeper, a caste the
lowest of all the castes properly so called. He was asked with others to write an
original composition on the comparative advantages of trade and service as a
career. He expressed a decided preference for trade. Yet who would enter into
mercantile transactions with a sweeper even if a man of that caste could be started
in such a calling? Everything that he touches would be considered as polluted;
and no one would buy grain or cloth from his shop, if he could buy them from any
other. There seems to be no opening in store for this very intelligent youth but that
of scavengering, mat-making, trapping, etc., all of which are far below the more
cultivated tastes he has acquired by attending school. And in such pursuits he is
not likely to evince the same degree of skill or enjoy the same contentment as one
who has grown up wholly illiterate. In these and such like ways the attempts made
by the government to raise the condition of the masses and place new facilities of V^
self-advancement within their reach, are thwarted by the absence of opportunities ' ■
and by the caste prejudices of the country."
In all provinces too the admission of low-caste boys into schools
attended by the sons of higher-caste Hindus was strongly resented.
So powerful was the feeling aroused that the commission of 1882,
whose labours will be noticed further on, holding that "no principle,
however sound, could be forced on an unwilling society in defiance
of their social and religious sentiments", recommended that separate
^ Ghailley, Administrative Problems of British Indiay p. 491 ; Interim Report of the Indian
Statutory Commission, p. 37.
2 Croft, op. cit. p. 231.
344 THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
schools should be opened for low-caste boys wherever they could be
induced to attend in sufficient number.^ The education of the children
of the six millions of aborigines who were to be found in Bengal,
Bombay and the Central Provinces was left to the missionaries. No
one else was inclined to prepare grammars or dictionaries of the
non-Aryan languages.
The workers in the great field of public instruction might well ask
for time, might well beg that their efforts should not be hag-ridden
by impetuosity and constant demands for numerical results. In fact,
too, despite all obstacles, education in its broadest sense did progress
among the masses as English influences rolled on over the surface of
India. The most powerful teacher was the railway which, despite
some gloomy prophecies, had attained immediate popularity and
necessarily tended to break down the barriers of ages, to stimulate
movement, and exchange of thought. In railway carriages Brahmans
and Sudras, Muslims and Sikhs, peasants and townsmen sat side by
side. As early even as 1867-8 the total number of railway passengers
was 13,746,000, of whom 95 per cent, travelled third class. Reflection,
observation, interest in the outside world were stimulated ; journeys
from villages to towns, emigration from India itself became more
common; life and property grew more secure; new impulses were
given to commerce, to industry and to agriculture. It should not be
forgotten that to English capital India owes the sinews of her railway
development. 2
English education advanced rapidly among the literary and pro-
fessional castes of Hindus. Voyages to England were cheaper and
easier, and venturesome youths began to finish their studies in that
country. The pioneers of this remarkable movement which has ex-
tended rapidly in our own time were four Hindu students of the
Calcutta Medical College who, braving social obstacles, embarked
for England in March, 1845, under the charge of one of their pro-
fessors, Dr H. H. Goodeve, were entered as pupils at University
College, London, and achieved distinguished success.^ Thirty years
later, recognising the trend of events, a few prominent Muhammadans
in the North-Western Provinces under the leadership of Maulvi
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, afterwards Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, banded
themselves together for the purpose of breaking down Muhammadan
aversion to Western learning. In 1871 the government of Lord Mayo
had initiated measures for this purpose ; * and now the cause was taken
up in earnest by Muslims themselves under the inspiring influence of
a vigorous and outstanding personality. In 1871 they began to collect
fimds; and in 1875 Sayyid Ahmad opened a high school for Muham-
* Cf. Hansard, 8 July, 1927, pp. 1638-9.
' Marshman, "Indian Railways" (Quarterly Review, cxxv, 60^.
* Calcutta Review, XLn, 120; also Banerjee, A Nation in the Making, p. 10.
* Mahmud, English Education in India, chaps, xxiv, xxvii.
ALIGARH 345
madans at Aligarh. In 1878 the school was raised to a second-grade
college and affiliated to the Calcutta University. At first Sayyid
Ahmad was fiercely opposed by conservative Muhammadans. But,
strongly encouraged by the government, he triumphed over all
obstacles. Princes and nobles, Muslim and Hindu, offered munificent
endowments. Viceroys and lieutenant-governors came forward as
benefactors.
While primarily intended for Muhammadans, and insisting on
religious instruction for its Muslim students, the Muhammadan
Anglo-Oriental College admitted pupils of all faiths, and after ten
years of struggle became a highly esteemed seat of education. It
started with an English and an Oriental department. In the former
all subjects were taught in English, and Arabic, Persian or Sanskrit
was taken up as a second language; in the latter either Arabic or
Persian literature was studied; history, geography, mathematics, etc.
were taught in Urdu, while English was, a second language. The
commission of 1882 reported that the Oriental department attracted
hardly any students. The principal of the college and the headmaster
of the school were both Europeans.^
The obstacles to the spread of female education have been described
in a previous chapter. These had hardly lessened with time and are
strong even now.^ In 1882 it was ascertained that the percentage of
girls at school to girls of a school-going age was '85 for all India,
1-59 for Bombay, 1-50 for Madras, -80 for Bengal, -72 for the Panjab
and '28 for the North-Western Provinces. From 1823 to 1851 female
education in Bombay had engaged the attention of the missionaries.
Then the Parsi and the Hindu merchants of Gujarat had taken the
matter up, and their example had been followed by certain Maratha
chiefs. Since 1871 the Bombay Government had been endeavouring
to collect an efficient staff of female teachers. In Madras, too,
missionaries had led the way. Indian societies had followed. In
Northern as well as in Southern India, missionary societies were the
pioneers and in 1882 were still foremost.^ But progress was very slow.
There was a great dearth of female teachers due to an impression that
such a calling could not be pursued by a modest woman.*
As the aristocracy and titled classes were disinclined to allow their
sons to associate with the scholars and students of government schools,
regarding them as their social inferiors. Lord Mayo initiated the
establishment of chiefs' colleges, making known to the Rajput nobles
in durbar at Ajmer his strong desire to establish in that city a college
*'for the sons and relatives of the chiefs, nobles, and principal thakurs
of Rajputana".^ A liberal endowment fund was subscribed; the
^ Mahmud, op. cit. pp. 163-4 "'
* Cf. The Statutory Commission's Interim Report, pp. 150-83.
* Report of 1SS2 Commission, pp. 525, 535.
* Burn, op. cit. p. 160. ^ Report of 1882 Commission, p. 487.
%
346 THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
government gave an equivalent sum, and the Mayo College at Ajmer
under carefully selected British principals proved a remarkable
success. Similar in character though smaller in scale was the Rajaram
College at Kathiawar. Other colleges started special classes for the
sons of native chiefs and large landed proprietors. All these innova-
tions were designed to encourage good education, "a healthy tone
and manly habits" among the sons of chiefs and nobles. But even so
the cadets of aristocratic or opulent families were frequently brought
up to lead idle lives.
In struggling to carry out the policy laid down in 1854, the govern-
ment found it necessary more than once to pause and take stock of
conditions and tendencies. This was done by means of commissions
appointed with the concurrence of the secretary of state. The first
education commission was charged by Lord Ripon's government in
1882 with the duty of enquiring into " the manner in which effect had
been given to the principles of the dispatch of 1854, and of suggesting
such measures as might seem desirable in order to further carrying
out of the policy laid down therein". The principal object of enquiry
was to be "the present state of elementary education and the means
by which this can everywhere be extended and improved".^ The
general operation of the universities was withdrawn from the field of
investigation, but the work carried on in the colleges was to be
reviewed. The commission, which was highly officialised, consisted of
twenty-two members (British and Indian) under the late Sir William
Hunter as president. Nearly 200 witnesses were examined : over 300
memorials were presented: 222 resolutions were passed, 180 unani-
mously. The main conclusions of the commission were that while
higher and secondary education was popular and successful among
the middle classes, particularly in Bengal, primary education needed
the strongest encouragement and should be declared " that part of the
system of public instruction which possesses an almost exclusive claim
on provincial revenues". It might well be provided, irrespective of
private co-operation, by the state or by the local self-government
boards, district and municipal, which were then taking more definite
shape and assuming new responsibilities. The means of secondary
education, on the other hand, should ordinarily be provided only
where local or private co-operation was forthcoming.
The commission was favourably impressed by the results of grants-
in-aid in Bengal where for one high school maintained by government
there were three, two aided and one unaided, established by private
effort, and only a few English middle schools supported wholly by
the state. In the hope that, as had happened in England, Western
education in India would lead to increased industrialism and there-
fore to fresh opportunities of employment, it recommended the in-
1 Resolution of the Government of India, Home Dept. (Education), Nos. 1-60,
3 February, 1882, para. 8.
THE HUNTER COMMISSION 347
stitution of school-courses alternative to the established "entrance"
course, and including subjects chosen with a view to the requirements
of commercial and industrial pursuits. Anxious to de-officialise higher
education as far as possible and to render it self-dependent, it advised
that all secondary schools should be made over to private manage-
ment whenever this could be done without lowering the standard or
diminishing the supply of instruction, and that the managers of aided
schools and colleges should be allowed to charge fees lower than those
payable at state schools of the same class. At the same time it urged
that, whatever withdrawal there might be from direct supervision of
education, there should be none from indirect but efficient control.
But "only in cases of extreme necessity" should private schools be
interfered with. In effect it recommended that system of cheap, un-
controlled venture schools, which has done so much to lower the
standard of education in Bengal.
The commission proposed special measures for encouraging educa-
tion among Muhammad ans. It considered that all elementary schools
should be subject to the inspection and supervision of the govern-
ment's educational officers, but should be made over to the care of
district and municipal boards, whose educational responsibilities
should be defined by legislation. It pointed out the importance of
physical education as well as mental, and considered that although
religious teaching must be excluded from the government schools,
something should be done, in response, to a widespread feeling, to
develop the sense of right and wrong in the minds of scholars of all
grades.^ After long debate, it resolved by a narrow majority, (a) that
an attempt should be made to prepare a moral textbook based upon
"the fundamental principles of natural religion" and suitable for use
by teachers in all government and other colleges ; (b) that the principal
or one of the professors in each government or aided college should
deliver to each college class in every session a series of lectures "on the
duties of a man and a citizen". But these suggestions were severely
criticised by the various local governments and were rejected by the
Government of India and by Lord Kimberley, secretary of state. The
general trend of criticism is indicated by the words of Sir Alfred Lyall,
lieutenant-governor of the North-Western Provinces. It was, he wrote,
no part of the functions of the Government of India to draw up a code
or morality, and issue it officially for the instruction of students, since
these could hardly be charged with ignorance of the commonly
accepted code of civilised communities, or with an acceptance of
principles contrary to that code. The objection to instituting courses
of lectures on the duties of a man and citizen was that possibly no two
professors would agree as to what these duties were; and it was clearly
undesirable to introduce into schools and colleges discussions on
subjects that opened out a very wide field of debate.^
* Cf. Croft, op. cit, p. 330; Mahmud, op. cit. chap. xxii. 2 Croft, op. cit. p. 332.
348 THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
The majority of the commission's recommendations were accepted
by the Government of India. In 1886 a Public Services Commission
was appointed which divided the educational department into three
branches — imperial, provincial and subordinate. The first of these
would be recruited in England and called the Indian Educational
Service;^ the second and third would be recruited in India. In effect,
while stimulating a devolution of control to local boards and school
committees, the government in spite of criticism^ reduced the British
element in both its inspecting and its teaching agencies. The process
was carried far in Bengal. In Madras, under the able twelve-years*
direction of the late H. B. Grigg, devolution to local bodies worked
well. But nowhere else were municipal and district boards disposed
to spend much money on elementary education.^
The labours of the over-burdened Calcutta University were lightened
by the formation of the Panjab University in 1882 and the Allahabad
University in 1887. Both were examining bodies. The former differed
from its elder sisters in possessing a faculty of Oriental learning and
in conducting proficiency and high proficiency examinations in
vernacular languages. It owed its origin to a college established at
Lahore in 1869 in part fulfilment of the wishes of chiefs, nobles and
prominent men of the Panjab and with the aid of their contributions.
The Allahabad University developed from a college opened originally
in a hired building by Sir William Muir, lieutenant-governor of the
North-Western Provinces, in 1872. It awarded degrees to students in
affiliated colleges and possessed no faculty of Oriental languages,
although Sir William Muir had asked for one. But these provinces
already possessed the famous Queen's College at Benares, where
Sanskrit was regularly taught by a staff of learned Brahmans ; and
examinations were held to which students were admitted who came
from affiliated institutions situate within and without the provincial
boundaries.
Between 1886 and 1901 college students throughout India increased
from 11,501 to 23,009, and pupils in secondary schools from 429,093
to 633,728. English games had reached Indian schools and soon
achieved popularity.* But English professors and inspectors became
fewer although Anglo-vernacular schools multiplied in Bengal and
increased elsewhere. English was thus more and more taught by men
to whom it was a foreign tongue, with results which were highly
creditable to the ability and industry of the learners, but unsatisfactory
in various respects.^ In the private venture schools of Bengal teachers
were underpaid and teaching suffered. Everywhere education was
largely memorisation of textbooks. A century earlier Charles Grant
^ Seton, India Office, p- i44- ^ Ghirol, Indian Unrest, p. xiv.
* Cf. Report of Calcutta University Commission, i, 54.
* See Satthianadhan, op. cit. pp. 284, 289.
' Ronaldshay, Heart of Aryavarta, chap, i; Sayyid Amir Ali Bilgrami, English Education in
IfuHay p. 35.
CURZON'S POLICY 349
had wisely urged the importance of teaching the principles of me-
chanics and their application to "agriculture and the useful arts".
The authors of the 1854 dispatch had not forgotten this counsel. But
the passion for literary courses of study had even then acquired a
strong momentum which gathered force as time went on.^ Outlay
on education by the government and local boards rose from 132-82
lakhs of rupees in 1885 to 177*04 lakhs in 1901; but the general
tendency to regard schooling simply as a means of qualifying for
clerical or professional employment retarded primary instruction
among the masses. At this juncture a governor-general arrived who
combined enthusiastic idealism with abounding energy and great
insight into the details of administration. Fearing no problem, how-
ever thorny, he gradually set himself to grapple with the thorniest
problem of all.
Toward the close of his third year of office, after examining the
whole educational field with elaborate care. Lord Gurzon summoned
the principal officers of the educational department to meet him at
Simla in September, 1901. There he reviewed the situation with
characteristic thoroughness and trenchancy, claiming that the suc-
cesses of imparting English education to India had been immeasurably
greater than the mistakes and blunders. ^ Moral and intellectual
standards had been raised, and might be raised still higher. But we
had started by too slavish an imitation of English models, and had
never purged ourselves of that taint. Examinations too had been
pushed to an unhealthy excess. Students were being crammed with
undigested knowledge. Teachers were obsessed with percentages,
passes and tabulated results. The various provincial systems of public
instruction were not inspired by unity of aim, and showed misdirection
and wastage of force which must be laid to the charge of the central
government.
The universities were merely examining bodies. The colleges were
for the most part collections of lecture-rooms, class-rooms and
laboratories flung far and wide over great provinces, bound to each
other by no tie of common feeling and to the university by no tie of
filial reverence. Greater unity should be infused into these jarring
atoms and higher education should be inspired by nobler ideals.
Hostels or boarding-houses should be adequately provided for colleges
in large towns and should be subject to systematic inspection. Senates
and syndicates should be reformed and converted into business-like
bodies containing a sufficiently strong element of experts. Academic
standards needed to be raised. Yet he had been invited after Queen
Victoria's death to celebrate her memory by lowering examination
standards all round. Secondary education presented more encouraging
features than university education. The demand for English teaching
^ Gf. Report of the Education Commission, 1882, p. 281.
2 Cf. Raleigh, Lord Curzon in India, pp. 313-39.
350 THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
was increasing ; schools were being started to meet it, and the income
from fees therein obtained was rising. On the other hand the middle-
class public still attached a superior commercial value to literary
3/ courses, which often led to nothing because they had not been
sufficiently practical or co-ordinated with technical or commercial
instruction in an advanced stage.
Primary education, the teaching of the masses in the vernacular,
had shrivelled and pined since the cold breath of Macaulay's rhetoric
passed over the field of the Indian languages and textbooks. This was
a mistake. Not only did the vernaculars in no way deserve such
neglect, for they contained literary treasures ; but the greatest of all
dangers in India was ignorance. As the masses gained knowledge, so
would they be happier and become more useful members of the body
politic. Yet we had rushed ahead with English education and left the
vernaculars standing at the post. Both were equally the duty and
^ the care of the government; but it must be admitted that the main
obstacles to a spread of primary education sprang firom the people
themselves.
In this part of his speech Lord Curzon hardly did justice to his
predecessors. From 1854 onwards the government had endeavoured
• ^to encourage the diffusion of knowledge through the vernaculars.
,^^This aim had been thwarted by the stolid conservatism of the masses,
/ by the limitations imposed by the caste-system, and by the zeal of the
Indian, and especially of the Bengali, middle classes for a Western
education that offered new interests, new hopes, and more ambitious
prospects. The vernaculars too had not remained stagnant. On the
contrary, vernacular prose had profited by English influences.^
For technical education, that practical instruction which qualifies
a man for the practice of some handicraft or industry or profession,
Lord Curzon considered that much more might be done on more
business-like principles. Female education, too, was extremely back-
ward. Moderate as was the attendance of boys at school, only one
girl attended for every ten boys, and only 2 J per cent, of girls of a
school-going age. As regards moral teaching for the young generally,
books could do something but teachers could do more. Competent
teachers, selected for character and ability, able to maintain discipline
and devoted to their work, were the main essential. Religious in-
struction must be carried on in private institutions only. Christian,
Hindu or Muhammadan, which could all be assisted by state grants.
The various provincial governments had in respect of education
become "a sort of heptarchy in the land". They needed inspiration
by a common principle and direction to a common aim. A measure
of the inadequate consideration which had been given to education
at headquarters was the fact that it was merely a sub-heading of the
work of the home department. Expert advice was needed to prevent
* Cf. Ronaldshay, op. cit. chap, iii, and Times Literary Supplement, ii February, 1932.
THE UNIVERSITIES ACT OF 1904 351
the central government from "drifting about like a deserted hulk on
chopping seas". He besought his hearers to realise that they were
*' handling the life-blood of future generations".
Action followed quickly on speech. The central government de-
clared that education must be a leading charge on the public funds,
and began a series of liberal grants to local governments on its behalf.
Private generosity and enterprise, the efforts of directors, inspectors
and teachers, were strongly stimulated. An inspector-general of
education was brought out from England and posted to headquarters.
A Universities Commission was appointed; and after much enquiry
and deliberation a Universities Bill was framed which became law in
1904 after acute controversy. It was a cautious measure, introducing
no radical change, but converting senates and syndicates into more
business-like bodies which contained majorities of educational experts,
leaving the training of undergraduate students mainly to the colleges,
but providing that the universities should themselves conduct post-
graduate courses of study. The senates were to tighten up conditions
for affiliation of colleges. They were to be responsible for courses,
textbooks and standards of examination. They were to propose to the
government regulations for the recognition of high schools and were
to pay attention to the conditions under which students and school-
boys were working. Vice-chancellors would be appointed by the
government; senates were to include directors of public instruction;
and in Calcutta the director would be a permanent member of the
syndicate. All affiliations and disaffiliations of colleges were to be
finally determined by the government; all professors, readers and
lecturers must be approved by it; and many details of university
policy were made subject to its supervision.
The commission was anxious that minimum fee rates should be
fixed for all colleges. This would have done something to restrict the
cut-throat competition which was going on in Bengal among managers
of private institutions with results disastrous to the youths concerned.
But the proposal excited so much clamour that (after Lord Curzon's
departure) it was dropped. The commission noted that the universities
possessed no machinery for inspecting high schools, and that at
Calcutta the syndicate had sometimes insisted on recognising new
venture schools "without due regard to the interests of sound
education and discipline". It urged that the university should
recognise only schools recommended by the department of public
instruction, and this advice was in principle adopted in all provinces
but Bengal, where it was rejected, after Lord Curzon's departure,
because the managers of a large number of unaided schools declined
to admit departmental inspectors.
The commission regarded with apprehension the growing neglect
of the vernaculars and of Oriental classical languages, for a moral
danger was involved. It announced the rather tardy discovery that
352 THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
the literature of the West had its roots in a past in which Oriental
students had no part and was based upon beliefs and ideas which were
meaningless to them. It was desirable to promote diversified types of
secondary education corresponding with the varying needs of after-
life. The government considered that this object would best be attained
by instituting a school-leaving certificate based on class-work as well
as on a final examination, which would be alternative to the entrance
and would be recognised not only by private employers, who were
increasingly discounting the value of an entrance pass, but by the
government and the universities. It should afford evidence of char-
acter and of the general and practical capacity of a candidate.
Lord Curzon did much to broaden the whole basis of higher educa-
tion, and to initiate technical, industrial and commercial courses.
With the assistance of a donation of ^^30,000 from Mr H. Phipps, an
American gentleman, he established an agricultural college at Pusa,
in Bihar, which became the parent of similar institutions in other
provinces. He improved the chiefs' colleges; he inspired the depart-
ments of public instruction with fresh vitality and stimulated private
benevolence. But with all his splendid energy, he came twenty years
too late. In the 'eighties he would have exercised a far more fruitful
and permanent influence on the subsequent course of education. As
things were, his very zeal inspired a belief that his real purpose was
to curb the increase of the restless English-educated. The cry went
forth that reaction was intended. Vested interests in private schools
and colleges bitterly protested. The partition of Bengal inflamed the
angry suspicion with which his university legislation was viewed in
that province and elsewhere.
He left India in November, 1905; and then followed years of
political and racial agitation due to various causes. The effect of the
Russo-Japanese War on Indian political thought, the gathering-in of
some of the harvest of the study of English history and literature, in-
creasing contact with an increasingly democratic Britain, combined
with the congested state of the bar, with rising prices which pressed
hardly on clerical and professional incomes, with a fast-growing
disproportion between applicants for and openings in government
service, with ill-disciplined schools and boycott propaganda, to
produce in Bengal an unprecedented ferment, which in a minor
degree affected the educated classes all over India. Senates, syndi-
cates, colleges, high schools, felt the contagion. Revolutionary litera-
ture and teaching were introduced into many of the far-flung, ill-
controlled colleges and schools of Bengal with marked effect; racial
animosity was constantly preached by press and platform. But while
the tide of impatience of British rule was rising among the English-
educated, the appetite for Western knowledge rapidly intensified.
There was a loud call for more expenditure not only on higher,
but also on technical and vocational education. To this demand
LATER TROUBLES 353
the government made strenuous endeavours to respond. In 1910
education was transferred from the supervision of the home depart-
ment of the central government to a new and separate department.
In 1913 Sir Harcourt Butler, the first education member of the
governor-general's council, published a resolution laying down care-
fully considered lines for advance and expansion. Money was to be
freely forthcoming ; and although the war intervened, expenditure in
1 9 1 6-1 7 from imperial, provincial and local funds rose to 6 1 4- 1 o lakhs,
more than double the figure of 1906-7. Private enterprise on the part
of missionary and other societies, of school and college committees,
and of benevolent individuals, swelled the total outlay of 191 6-1 7 to
1128-83 lakhs. Numerical progress was marked in many directions.
Sir Henry Sharp's quinquennial review for 191 2-1 7 brings out in no
uncertain fashion the persevering efforts of the government to guide
and stimulate genuine advance, to broaden the whole basis of public
instruction by establishing agricultural colleges, engineering, com-
mercial, weaving, mining, carpentry and leather- work schools. The
obstacles, however, were real. Sir Henry Sharp insists strongly on the
fact that quality in industrial education must depend upon quality
in school- work. 1 And here it is that all the old difficulties were and
still are rampant.
Nowhere have these been more clearly or authoritatively defined
than in the Interim {Education) Report of the Statutory Commission recently
published. As the commission points out, it is comparatively easy to
vote money and to secure plausible figures of numerical progress in
attendance at primary classes. But to spend that money to solid
practical advantage in pursuance of a well-directed policy carried out
by efficient agencies is not so easy. And to secure that a large increase
in numbers of pupils attending primary schools produces a com-
mensurate increase in literacy is harder still, for at present compara-
tively few of these pupils stay long enough at school to reach a stage
in which the attainment of literacy may be expected.
Under present conditions of rural life, and with the lack of suitable vernacular
literature, a child has very little chance of attaining literacy after leaving school;
and indeed, even for the literate, there are many chances of relapse into illiteracy.
The wastage in the case of girls is even more serious than in the case of boys.^
The whole system of secondary education, although in some respects
improved, is still dominated by the ideal that every boy who enters a
secondary school should prepare himself for the university; "and the
immense numbers of failures at matriculation and in the university
examinations indicate a great waste of effort". After noticing im-
provements in the universities, the commission observes :
But the theory that a university exists mainly, if not solely, to pass students
through examinations still finds too large acceptance in India; and we wish that
there were more signs that the universities regarded the training of broad-minded,
^ Sharp, Review, p. 155. ^Interim Report, p. 345. Cf. also pp. 150-83.
c H I VI 23
354 THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
tolerant and self-reliant citizens as one of their primary functions. They have been
hampered in their work by being over-crowded with students who are not fitted
by capacity for university education and of whom many would be far more likely
to succeed in other careers.
These words were written ten years after the close of our period.
Since January, 1 92 1 , education has been entrusted to the charge of
ministers in the major provinces. The central government has stood
aside. But the old problems are as formidable as ever. As regards
financial obstacles, there is no reason to suppose that any parlia-
mentary government in India, government in which one group would
compete for popularity with another group, would care to raise money
by fresh taxation. But the difficulties are not only financial. On
28 January, 1926, a debate took place in the Legislative Assembly at
Delhi on a resolution moved by a private member requesting the
central government to investigate unemployment among the middle
classes and suggest remedies. The government was told that its duty
was "to remove the causes of this discontent and grapple with this
evil"; but the most notable contribution to the discussion was the
speech of Mr Bipin Chandra Pal, a Bengal nationalist leader, who
frankly said that the mentality of the middle classes was very largely
the cause of middle-class unemployment. "We must change our social
system, we must change our system of education, and we must induce
our young men not to avoid, even if they do detest, manual labour.
That is the real difficulty." Truer words were never spoken; but the
assimilation of such ideas must be a slow and arduous process. The
solution of such problems rests with Indians themselves.
A feature of our own times has been the considerable growth in the
number of Indian students who finish their education abroad and
particularly in Britain. It is improbable that in any year before 1880
there were more than 100 in Europe. In 1894 there were 308; in 1907
there were 780 ; in 1 92 1 there were 1 450 ; in 1 929-30 there were in Great
Britain 1761, of whom 583 were entered on the books of the various
Inns of Court. The experience of such men, who are able to observe and
examine educational and economic problems common to all nations,
should be useful to their country. There is plenty of idealism in India.
There is the enthusiasm for national or communal advance which in
the field of education has led to the foundation of Hindu and Muslim
universities. There have been notable and strenuous enterprises such
as Dr Rabindranath Tagore's School at Bolpur and Mrs Besant's
Central Hindu College at Benares. There is the Christian idealism of
the missionaries ; and what this can achieve on emergencies is shown
by an incident of the war period.
All the staffs and schools of the Punjab University and its colleges sent fewer men
to fight than a single middle school of the Belgian Franciscan fathers at Dalwal in
the Salt Range, from which nine teachers and 95 boys, practically all who were of
age and fit, were enlisted.^
^ Sir Michael O'Dwyer, India as I knew it^ p. 228.
GENERAL REVIEW 355
If a considerable portion of Indian idealism could be perseveringly
devoted to village uplift, what might not be achieved? Enthusiasm
has often welled up here and there. But it has frequently been spas-
modic, impatient of careful deliberation, prone to hurry on rather
than to make sure, to accept the show rather than the substance.^
"We have now, as it were before us, in that vast congeries of peoples
we call India, a long, slow march in uneven stages, through all the
centuries from the fifth to the twentieth.'' As Mr Mayhew writes,^
the educational system established among these peoples by the British
Government is not a natural or free expression of national life. It is
a rambling and unfinished house, showing signs everywhere of change
of plans during construction, but, with all its defects, habitable and
capable at any time of modification and expansion. It has stimulated
vitality of all kinds,^ religious, commercial, social and political. This
vitality has brought unrest due, in the words of a Western-educated
Hindu, *' to the deep-seated reason that people are throbbing with new
sensations and groping their way from darkness to light".* The
writer added that in the darkness Indians could not distinguish friend
fi-om foe, but that the day would come when there would be clearer
vision
5
The system initiated in 1854 has produced a long line of excellent
public servants, of writers and public men acquainted not only with
the English language but with English ideals and English methods;
it has gone far to combat social evils and to develop the industrial and
commercial resources of India. In combination with the devoted
efforts of the missionaries it has raised the hopes and enlarged the
interests of sections of the people formerly sunk in social degradation;
it has strongly stimulated the education of women and has opened the
way to progressive self-government. On the other hand, it cannot
alter the physical facts of India, the blazing sun, the enervating rains,
the climate which depresses physical energy, and, in the case of the
vast peasant majority, activity of mind. It has failed to spread know-
ledge far among the masses; and among that comparatively small
minority who take readily to education, it has produced numbers of
men who, disgusted with meagre rewards for years of laborious study,
expect far too much from a government that has always been strug-
gling with a great variety of needs and calls, and has shrunk, as any
government of India must always shrink, from imposing fresh taxa-
tion. From the first, well-meant efforts produced mixed results, and
expenditure was hampered by inadequate resources. Psychological
questions of extreme difficulty arose, remained, and have for years
^ Gf. Interim Report of Statutory Commission, chap. xvii.
2 Education of India, p. loi.
' Gf. Bevan, Thoughts on Indian Discontents, p. 54.
* Gobinda Das, Hinduism and India.
" Gf. Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, chap, xv; DarHng, Rusticus
loquitur, pp. 9-1 1, 25, 66, 180, 203.
23-2
356 THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
been greatly aggravated by political influences. ^ In the background
all along has been "the eternal mystery of the East", the segregating
religious and social traditions of ages. A tendency to revive and
multiply the old patshalas and maktabs, separate schools on a com-
munal basis, is marked in certain provinces to-day. ^ Well might Lord
Curzon say: "What the future of Indian education may be neither
you nor I can tell. It is the future of the Indian race, in itself the most
hazardous though absorbing of speculations". But to that great
cause not only high-souled pioneers but numbers of our countrymen,
"by the cause v^hich they served unknown", have devoted years of
unobtrusive and impersonal activity. "Tantus labor ne sit cassus!"
^ Cf. Bevan, op. cit. pp. io6, 144.
2 Interim Report of Statutory Commission, pp. 19^201.
CHAPTER XX
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES
1858-1918
"jTJlFTER all they are our servants. They are the servants of this
government, engaged by this government through the secretary of
state to administer British dependencies." ^ These words were spoken
of the Indian Civil Service but apply also to the higher ranks of the
other public services which throughout the period 1 858-191 8 con-
stituted the frame of the Indian Government. The present chapter
will describe their organisation, trace their history, and describe the
circumstances which eventually overshadowed their prospects.
The Indian Civil Service was formerly known as the covenanted
civil service because its members entered into covenants originally
with the East India Company and afterwards with the secretary of
state in council. It provides officers who fill those posts of general
supervision which are commonly known as "superior", both in the
general executive administration of British India, and in the adminis-
tration of justice. Its members also fill the higher posts in the govern-
ment secretariats, in the political or diplomatic service (along with
officers of the Indian Army), and in other departments. Some are
nominated to serve on the various legislative councils. All first learn
their work in lower administrative posts.
The service derives its constitution from various acts of parliament.
Developed originally out of the establishment of junior and senior
merchants, factors and writers employed for purposes of trade by the
East India Company, it first received statutory recognition in the East
India Company Charter Act of 1793 which provided that "all
vacancies happening in any of the offices, places or employments in
the civil line of the Company's service in India should, subject to
certain specified restrictions, be filled from among the Company's
civil servants ". At first recruits underwent no period of probation or
training; then in 1800 Wellesley founded a college at Calcutta where
young civil servants were to be instructed in literature, science and
Oriental languages. By his famous minute of 10 July, 1800, this great
governor-general'put'an end to " the loose and irregular system " which
he found in existence and marked out a fresh course to the great
benefit of posterity . Finally in 1 806 the Company established an " East
India College" at Haileybury for the training for two years of youths
who had received nominations. ^ Admission lay with the directors who,
* Speech by Mr Acland in the House of Commons, Hansard, 15 June, 1922, p. 624.
2 Memorials of Haileybury College^ p. 17.
358 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
as a matter of courtesy, made over a proportion of nominations to the
Board of Control. Wellesley's Calcutta college survived till 1854 as a
language school for Bengal civil servants. In 1853, when the maxi-
mum age for admission to Haileybury was twenty-one, the question
of the renewal of the East India Company's charter came before
parliament for the last time. Among other changes proposed by the
president of the Board of Control, Sir Charles Wood, was the intro-
duction of open competition, "a great experiment which would
justify itself by securing intellectual superiority while affording as
good a chance as then existed of obtaining in successful candidates
those qualities which no examination can test".^ Wood was warmly
supported by Macaulay, who urged in the House of Commons ^ that
even the character of the governor-general was less important than
the character and spirit of the servants by whom the administration
of India was carried on ; and parliament resolved that admission to
Haileybury and to the covenanted civil service should be open to all
natural-born subjects of Her Majesty, whether European, Indian, or
men of mixed race, who could establish their claim by success in
competitive examinations held in England under regulations framed
by the Board of Control. That body, advised by a distinguished com-
mittee presided over by Macaulay, decided that endeavours should
be made to secure candidates between eighteen and twenty-three
years of age who had received the best and most liberal education
obtainable in this country. Successful candidates were to pass through
a period of probation before appointment. The first batch went to
Haileybury ; but this fine college was soon considered to have served
its purpose and was closed by an act of 1855 "^ith effect from
31 January, 1858, when the Mutiny was in full swing. By section 32
of the Government of India Act of 1858 the power of regulating
appointments to the Indian Civil Service was made over to the secre-
tary of state in council who would act with the advice and assistance
of Her Majesty's civil service commissioners. The competitive prin-
ciple was reaffirmed. In 1859 the maximum age for admission was
lowered to twenty-two and a year's probation in England was pre-
scribed for selected candidates.^
On 6 June, 1 861, Wood, now secretary of state for India, introduced
a measure which became law under the title of the Indian Civil
Service Act of 186 1 (24 & 25 Vic. c. 54). Its object was to legalise
certain appointments to civil posts which had in the past been made
in contravention of the act of 1 793. Annexations of territories, growth
in population, increasing resort to the law courts, had compelled the
appointment of military officers, domiciled Europeans, Eurasians and
Indians, to posts which, under the statute of 1 793, should have been
* Hansard, 3 June, 1853, cxxvii, 1158. ' Idem, 24 June, 1853, cxxvin, 745.
' See p. 13, Selection and Training of Candidates for the Indian Civil Service (H.M. Stationery
Office), 1876.
THE ACT OF 1861 359
held by covenanted civil servants.^ Such appointments must now be
legalised and should be legally permissible in future. Lord Stanley,
Wood's predecessor in office, supported this proposal but emphasised ^
the importance of not diminishing the value of appointments to the
civil service to such an extent as to deter men of intelligence and
ability from joining it and thus raising men less intelligent and able
"to a position in life to which they were not equal'*. Neither must
there be openings for jobbery. Parliament decided that the bill should
include a schedule of offices reserved exclusively for civil servants
except in cases where the governor-general in council, for special
reasons, desired to appoint other persons who must have resided in
India for at least seven years. These exceptional appointments would
require confirmation by the secretary of state and a majority of his
council called together to consider each case. Parliament, at the same
time, declared its adherence to the principle laid down by the Charter
Act of 1833, and reiterated in Queen Victoria's proclamation of 1858,
that "no native of India by reason only of religion, place of birth,
descent, colour, or any of them, would be disabled from holding any
office or employment under the Company".
The appointments entered in the schedule of the statute of 186 1 as
exclusively reserved for covenanted civil servants were almost en-
tirely posts in the older or regulation provinces; but later orders,
passed in 1876 by the secretary of state in council, directed that the
privileges conferred by statute in regulation provinces should be
extended mutatis mutandis to non-regulation provinces also.^
At first no fee was charged for admission to competitions for the
Indian Civil Service. British competitors gradually increased. From
1 866 the maximum age for admission was lowered to twenty-one, and
probationers passed through a special two-years' course at an approved
university. The total number of competitors rose from 1 54 for eighty
vacancies in i860 to 284 for fifty-two vacancies in 1865, and 325 for
forty vacancies in 1870. In that year there were seven Indian com-
petitors, of whom one was successful. In 1869 three Indians had been
successful, all Bengalis. Indian aspirants had in those days to brave
serious social obstacles in their own country. The late Sir Surendranath
Banerjee, who competed in 1 869, observes in his memoirs :
I started for England on March 3, 1868 with Romesh Chandar Dutt and Bihari
Lai Gupta. We were all young, in our teens, and a visit to England was a more
serious affair then than it is now. It not only meant absence from home and those
near and dear to one for a number of years, but there was the grim prospect of
social ostracism, which for all practical purposes has now happily passed away.
We all three had to make our arrangements in secret, as if we were engaged in some
nefarious plot of which the world should know nothing.*
In such circumstances Indians were naturally very slow to come
forward. The pioneers were Hindus and belonged to the "English-
1 Hansard, clxiii, 652-9. - Idem, clxiii, 665-6.
3 Cf. pp. 76-7, supra. * Banerjee, A Nation in the Making, p. 10.
36o THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
educated" class in the presidency pro\dnces which contained the
great seaports. The paucity of candidates caused searchings of heart
among the members of John Lawrence's government, which estab-
lished nine scholarships in 1868, each of the annual value of ,^200,
tenable in Great Britain, with a view to encourage natives of India
** to resort more freely to England for the purpose of perfecting their
education, and of studying for the various learned professions or for
the civil and other services in India". The scholarships were to be
awarded partly on the results of competition and partly on nomina-
tion of duly qualified persons. This somewhat paltry expedient did
not commend itself to the Duke of Argyll who was then secretary of
state.
He was, however, seriously concerned at the failure of the existing
system to make good the pledges of 1833 and 1858, and stated in
parliament on 1 1 March, 1869, that he had always felt that the com-
petitive system, as by law established, rendered nugatory the promises
of 1833.^ Lord Houghton observed that the declaration, which stated
that the government of India would be conducted without reference
to differences of race, was magnificent but had hitherto been futile ;2
and the duke replied that while the queen's proclamation of 1858
contained declarations of principle which had been found exceedingly
inconvenient in practice and had been quoted against us in cases to
which they were not meant to apply, the pledges of 1833 must be
honoured as far as possible. Eventually it was provided by section 6
of the Government of India Act of 1870 (33 Vic. c. 3) that nothing in
any act of parliament or other law now in force in India
should restrain the authorities ... by whom appointments were made to offices,
places and employments in the covenanted civil service, from appointing a native
of India to any such place, office or employment although such native should not
have been admitted to the civil service in the manner already prescribed by law.
Appointments of this kind would, however, be subject to such rules
as might be from time to time prescribed by the governor-general
in council and sanctioned by the secretary of state in council with
the concurrence of a majority of members present. For the purpose
of this act the words "natives of India" would include any person
born or domiciled within Her Majesty's dominions in India and not
established there for temporary purposes only; and "the governor-
general in council would define and limit from time to time the
qualifications of natives of India thus expressed".
Some years elapsed before agreement was reached between the
Indian and the home authorities as to the rules which were requisite
to give effect to this section. The former desired to prescribe a term
of government service in the higher ranks of subordinate employ as
the main qualification of such appointments; the latter wished to
* Hansard, cjxciv, 1060. ' Ideniy cacciv, 1079.
THE UNCOVENANTED SERVICE 361
interpret the statute in a broader sense. In 1875 revised rules were
drawn up by Lord Northbrook's government and were sanctioned in
London as a tentative measure. But these proved unsatisfactory and
gave place to other rules framed by Lord Lytton's government, which
ordained that a proportion not exceeding one-sixth of the total number
of covenanted civil servants appointed in any year by the secretary of
state should be natives selected in India by the local governments
subject to the approval of the governor-general in council. Selected
candidates should, save in exceptional circumstances, be on probation
for two years. In a resolution, dated 24 December, 1879, the Govern-
ment of India stated that appointments under the rules would generally
be confined to
young men of good family and social position possessed of fair abilities and educa-
tion, to whom the offices which were open to them in the uncovenanted service
had not proved sufficient inducement to come forward for employment.
The nominees were called "statutory civil servants ". Sixty-nine were
nominated in after years, but, generally speaking, did not possess
sufficient educational qualifications and were often found unequal to
their responsibilities.
Below the covenanted was a large "uncovenanted" civil service.
This term was purely technical. It excluded military officers in civil
employ and embraced the very large number of public servants
recruited in India, who filled executive and judicial charges not
occupied by military officers or reserved for members of the covenanted
civil service. The service came so far down in the administrative scale
that the term "uncovenanted" was often employed in a derogatory
sense. Its members in the regulation provinces were almost entirely
debarred from admission to posts usually held by members of the
Indian Civil Service. But in the non-regulation provinces some un-
covenanted officers of British descent were, like military officers,
employed alongside of covenanted civil servants. They were selected
either because the tracts in question were in a disturbed state and
unfit for methods of long-established administration, or on account
of their peculiar knowledge and experience. Except in matters of
pension they were treated practically on an equality with their
covenanted colleagues, but were debarred by the operation of the
statute of 1 86 1 from holding the posts of secretary and junior secretary
to the local government and were in practice very seldom appointed
to the highest judicial offices. As the country became more and more
settled, the practice of appointing military and uncovenanted officers
to higher posts ordinarily held by covenanted civil servants fell into
disuse; and in 1876 it was definitely abandoned in the case of Oudh,
the Central Provinces, non-regulation areas in Bengal, and the North-
western Provinces. It was abolished in Sind in 1885, in the Panjab
in 1903, and in Assam in 1907.
362 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
A small minority of the large number of uncoven anted civil servants
held superior posts. The majority consisted of natives of India re-
cruited in the various provinces by the local governments under a
system of nomination, tempered in some cases by qualifying examina-
tions and probationary periods. Candidates for executive appoint-
ments had to possess minimum educational qualifications attested by
certificates of success in examinations conducted by universities or the
educational departments. Candidates for the judicial line had to be
either bachelors of law of some university or accredited pleaders or
advocates.
In 1853 ^t had been stated in the House of Commons that the
universal rule and practice in Indian administration was "native
agency and European superintendence".^ This was still the practice
between 1858 and 1886; but all the time Western education was
spreading, and with its expansion was teaching Indians to feel their
way toward higher spheres and to complain because the ways of
approach were narrow.
An illuminating account of the early history of the police is con-
tained in the report of the commission appointed by Lord Curzon's
government in 1902. The organisation of the force in the various
provinces within our period was the result of a comprehensive
enquiry made in i860 by a committee appointed by the Government
of India which embodied its recommendations, where approved, in
various acts of the governor-generaPs legislative council. The force
was to receive a semi-military training fi-om its officers and was to be
subject to general control by the district magistrates and the local
governments. It was charged with the maintenance of law and order
and the detection of crime. Its chief officers in each province would
be inspector-generals assisted by two or more deputies, and their
subordinates would be district superintendents and assistant super-
intendents. The force was soon established ; the district superintendents
were invariably British, and in the more important charges were given
British assistant superintendents. For some years the higher grades
of the force were mainly recruited from the commissioned ranks of
the army; but this practice was repugnant to the military authorities,
and gradually gave place to recruitment in India by nomination. But
from the year 1893 the superior ranks were recruited mainly in
England by competitive examination for which Europeans alone were
eligible, and in a minor degree by appointments in India under a
combined system of nomination and examination which included
Indians. The age of admission in England was seventeen to nineteen.
Up to the year 1870 engineers for the public works department had
been furnished from the corps of the Royal Engineers, from civil
engineers appointed in England^ after competitive examination or
* Sir J. W. Hogg, Hansard, 3 June, 1853, cxxvni, 1270.
' Cf. Imperial Gazetteer of India y rv, 319.
PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT 363
special selection, and from qualified students of Indian engineering
colleges. The Thomason College at Rurki, opened in 1848, began to
furnish engineers to the department in 1850. The Poona Civil En-
gineering College, established in 1 854 for the education of subordinates
for the Bombay public works department, developed in 1865 into a
college of science at Poona affiliated to the Bombay University and
educating candidates for an engineering degree. The Madras Civil
Engineering College, affiliated to the Madras University in 1877, also
prepared students for engineering degrees. In England the Royal
Engineering College at Cooper's Hill was established in 1871 for the
education of civil engineers for service in the Indian public works
department. The age of admission was seventeen to twenty-one, and
the course lasted three years. As students began to pass out of
Cooper's Hill in sufficient numbers, the recruitment of civil engineers
from other sources gradually ceased in England. In 1876 Lord
Salisbury, then secretary of state, wrote that, as the European portion
of the superior public works establishments was provided through
Cooper's Hill, the Indian engineering colleges might be regarded as
particularly intended for natives of India. Eventually it was decided
that of thirty recruits appointed in 1885, 1886 and 1887, nine were to
be taken from Indian colleges, fifteen from Cooper's Hill, and six from
the Royal Engineers.
The work of the public works department was distributed among
three branches: (a) "General" which was subdivided into "Roads
and Buildings " and "Irrigation ", (b) State Railways and (c) Accounts.
Each branch included an upper and a lower subordinate establishment.
The finance department was directly controlled by the Government
of India. Officers of its superior staff were liable for employment in
any province. The functions of the department were to bring to
account and audit the expenditure of all branches of the civil ad-
ministration and to deal with questions relating to paper currency,
loan operations and coinage. The nine accountants-general of pro-
vinces were treasurers of charitable endowments and responsible for
the proper check by officers of their department of the accounts of
such local bodies as district and municipal boards. They further
supervised the movements of funds from one district treasury to
another; and were themselves subordinate to a comptroller and
auditor-general. The whole superior staff of the department num-
bered 172. Below this staff were chief superintendents and chief
accountants. Up to the year 1899, while the higher posts were
generally filled by trained members of the Indian Civil Service, the
remainder were filled wholly in India. Then it was found that the
local supply of suitably qualified Europeans and Eurasians was in-
sufficient, and it was decided that at least four out of nine vacancies
should be filled by recruitment in England. In 1909 it was arranged
that half the vacancies should be reserved for natives of India.
364 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
In 1847 Dr Gibson was appointed conservator of forests in Bombay,
and in 1856 Dr Gleghorn received a similar appointment in Madras;
but although both these officers impressed on their governments the
physical value of the forests and the necessity of carefully preventing
denudation of the hills in the interest of the water supply of the
country, forest conservancy was for some time regarded mainly as a
direct source of revenue to the state. ^ After the annexation of Pegu,
however, Lord Dalhousie, seeing that fine forests stood in danger of
reckless spoliation by private individuals, inaugurated a preventive
policy. In 1856 Dietrich Brandis was summoned from Germany to
be superintendent of forests in Pegu and remained there till 1862,
organising forest management. He was then placed on special duty
to do the same in India, and in 1 864 was appointed inspector-general
of forests to the central government. To him and to his successors and
pupils, Schlich and Ribbentrop, is due primarily the credit of or-
ganising the forest department, and the introduction of methods of
management adopted from the best European schools.
In 1865 the first Indian Forest Act was planned to provide for the
protection and efficient management of the government forests. In
1866 Brandis proceeded to England to arrange for the recruitment of
forest officers who were to be trained in the schools of France and
Germany, where scientific forestry was far more advanced than it was
in England. From 1 885 to 1 905 forest probationers studied at Cooper's
Hill, supplementing their courses by continental tours. Up to 1905
they were selected by competitive examination; but from 1905 on-
ward, candidates for examination failing, appointments were made
by a selection committee appointed by the India Office. The forest
department was controlled by conservators (chief officers of provinces
or parts of provinces) , deputy-conservators in charge of forest divisions,
and assistant conservators of two grades in charge of forest subdivisions.
All these officers were British and under them was an Indian executive
staff consisting of sub-assistant conservators, rangers, foresters and
forest guards. The management of forests was committed to the local
governments, but the head of the department was the inspector-
general for the Government of India.
The growth of the department of public instruction has already
been traced. ^ The control of other departments (jail, postal, tele-
graphs, survey, salt, excise, opium, meteorological, registration,
archaeological, customs, mint, geological survey, agricultural) rested
in British hands. Generally speaking these departments were recruited
in India; but they were often presided over by an officer selected from
one of the services recruited in England. We must pass on to that
distinguished service which has been truly called the pivot of all the
others. 3
^ Imp. Gaz. in, 107-8. * P. 336, supra.
* Speech by Mr Montagu to the British Medical Association.
I
INDIAN MEDICAL SERVICE 365
The Indian Medical Service was primarily military, but lent a large
proportion of its officers to the civil administration. In times of
emergency these officers could be recalled to military duty; and
during the war few were left in civil employ. Medical officers in civil
employ were responsible for the administration and inspection of the
hospitals and dispensaries established in every district, for medico-
legal work connected with the administration of justice, for attendance
on government servants and for examination of candidates for public
employment. They were also responsible for jails and the care of the
public health. Each province possessed its inspector-general of civil
hospitals or surgeon-general, and its inspector-general of jails, who
were always selected officers of the Indian Medical Service. These
provincial chiefs worked under the local governments, subject to the
supervision of a director-general who was posted to the headquarters
of the central government. Under the inspectors-general of civil
hospitals and surgeons-general were the "civil surgeons", one of
whom in each district presided over a staff of assistant and sub-assistant
surgeons. Working mainly through these civil surgeons, the Indian
Medical Service not only gallantly combated many a devastating
epidemic, but educated India in the preservation of public health and
in the theory and practice of Western medicine. Its officers have
prevented immeasurable suffering and saved countless lives. " No less
than 34 have gained the blue ribbon of the scientific world, the
fellowship of the Royal Society."^
The statutory civil service had proved a failure as a means of
admitting Indians to the higher services. It seemed probable that as
years went on and contact between India and England increased,
more Indians would enter the civil service through the door of the
competitive examination in London. As regards British personnel,
the competitive system had proved a conspicuous success. The average
yearly number of candidates had fallen decidedly after 1870, partly
perhaps in consequence of the legislation of that year already men*
tioned, but principally because from 1871 onwards an examination
fee of ;(^5 was demanded of every candidate. Up to that year no fee
had been claimed. In their seventeenth annual report the civil service
commissioners stated that the diminution was "not so much in the
class of competitors as in the number, previously considerable, of
those who presented themselves without sufficient preparation to
warrant any hope of success ". In 1878 the maximum limit of age for
admission was reduced to nineteen, and the probationary period was
fixed at two years to be spent in some university or college approved
by the secretary of state. The object of the change was to bring selected
candidates earlier to their life's work. All along the question was how
to attract the best men possible and how best to fit them for active
duties. It was, however, soon apparent that the lower age limits
^ Report of the Committee on the reorganisation of the Indian Medical Services, 1919, p. 19.
366 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
pressed hardly on Indian candidates, and the age was raised to 21-23
from 1892 to 1905, and to 22-24 from 1906 onwards. When the last
change was made the examination was amalgamated with that for
the home civil service, successful candidates being allowed to state
their preference for either. Throughout the period 1871 to 191 4 the
total number of competitors remained fairly constant while the Indian
contingent increased very slowly, as is evident from the following
figures;
Year
Vacancies
Candidates
Indian
candidates
Successful
Indians
1870
1880
40
27
332
7
2
I
0
1890
1900
1910
1914
47
53
205
213
184
183
10
17
20
26
5
2
I
7
The highest number of candidates in any year between 1871 and 19 14
wa^ 237 for 68 vacancies in 1897.^
In December, 1885, the first Indian National Congress met at
Bombay and demanded that simultaneous examinations should be
established in India and in England for admission to the covenanted
civil service. The demand arose from the Hindu and Parsi pro-
fessional and literary classes. The Muhammadans, as a community,
were for years strongly opposed to it. Conscious of their inferiority
to the Hindus in numbers, wealth and education, they regarded the
congress as aiming in fact at the establishment of a Hindu monopoly
of posts and power. Sayyid Ahmad, their leader, expressed his views
in trenchant language :
If government want to give over the internal rule of the country from its own
hands into those of the people of India, then we will present a petition that, before
doing so, she pass a law of competitive examination, namely that that nation which
passes first in this competition be given the rule of the country; but that in this
competition we be given the pen of our ancestors which is in fact the true pen for
writmg the decrees of sovereignty.^
In order to find a solution for the problem Lord Dufferin's govern-
ment in 1 886 appointed a public services commission under Sir Charles
Aitchison, lieutenant-governor of the Panjab. The fifteen members
included four Hindu and two Muhammadan gentlemen of high status.
Of the British members five belonged to the covenanted civil service,
one to the uncovenanted civil service, two were British non-officials,
and one had been chief justice of the Madras High Court of Judica-
ture. Broadly speaking, the object of this commission was to devise
a scheme which might reasonably be "hoped to possess the necessary
elements of finality and to do full justice to the claims of natives of
* I am indebted to the civil service commissioners for this information.
' Speeches and letters of Sir Saiyid Ahmad, Pioneer Press, Allahabad, 1888; Mahmud,
British EdMotion in Indioj chap. xxx.
THE PUBLIC SERVICES COMMISSION 367
India to higher and more extensive employment in the public service ".
The commission rejected the idea of altering the system of admission
to the covenanted civil service. It had been understood that the
entrance examination was to bear a distinctly English character, and
to constitute a test of English qualifications. The most natural ar-
rangement, therefore, was that this examination should be held in
England, the centre of the educational system on which it was based.
The commission advised abolition of the system of filling appoint-
ments by means of the statutory civil service which had failed to fulfil
the expectations anticipated from it and was "condemned for suffi-
ciently good reasons not only by particular sections of the native
community but also by the very large majority of officials, both
European and native, who had enjoyed practical experience of its
workings ". The attempt to confine the selection to young men of rank
and to attract to the service men combining high social position with
the requisite educational and intellectual qualifications had failed.
A similar result would almost necessarily follow upon any attempt
*'to engraft on a superior and imported service recruited in such a
manner as to secure the highest possible English qualifications a
system based on other principles and designed to meet a wholly
different object". The commission proposed to reduce the list of
scheduled posts reserved by the act of 1861 for members of the
covenanted civil service and to transfer a certain number of these
posts to a local service which would be called "the provincial civil
service" and would be separately recruited in every province.
Appointments to the transferred judicial posts would be on account
of merit and ability proved either in the public service or in practice
at the Indian bar; appointments to executive offices would be on
account of exceptional merit and ability already shown in the public
service. The services would no longer be termed covenanted and
uncovenanted but imperial and provincial. Below the provincial
service would be a "subordinate civil service" from which it would
be partly recruited. But its executive branch would also be recruited
by competitive examination, wherever not inexpedient, and its
judicial branch would be largely filled by selected barristers, advocates
or pleaders. The salaries of members of the provincial civil service
would be fixed on independent grounds, and would have no relation
to those attached to appointments in the imperial civil service. The
commission suggested the formation, where possible, of a provincial
branch in each department of the public service, public works, police,
forests and the rest. Substantial effect was given to this scheme, the
secretary of state directing that the covenanted civil service should be
known in future as " the Civil Service of India" and that each branch
of the provincial civil service should be called by the name of the
particular province to which it belonged.^ A certain proportion of
^ Dispatch, 12 September, 1889.
368 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
public offices reserved for the civil service of India and afterwards
termed "listed posts", would in each province be entered on a list as
open to the new provincial service. Rules must be framed and issued,
under sanction of the secretary of state, which would empower local
governments to bestow any listed post upon a native of India. All this
was done; and the local governments were ordered to fill one-sixth
of the offices hitherto reserved for the Indian Civil Service with
provincial servants when the claims of existing statutory civil servants
had been satisfied. The number of civil servants recruited in England
had already been reduced so as not to fill more than five-sixths of the
reserved appointments. After consulting the local governments the
Government of India decided to list ninety- three posts, this figure being
considered suitable for meeting reasonable requirements. It would
be worked up to after satisfying the claims of officers already in the
service and would be liable to expansion.
Thirty years later another public services commission stated that
the reforms recommended by their predecessors in 1 886, while failing
to satisfy Indian aspirations for employment of the higher type, "had
undoubtedly resulted in a great improvement in the standard of every
service". Generally speaking, officers promoted from the provincial
civil services to hold Indian Civil Service posts had done efficient
work. But
the inferiority of status and social position which had always been attached to the
provincial services, aggravated to some extent by subsequent changes, had been
felt by the Indian pubhc as a real grievance, particularly in the case of the more
important services such as the civil, educational and public works.
The Government of India had just completed reorganisation of the
public services in accordance with the orders finally passed on the
recommendations of the commission of 1886-7, when on 22 June,
1 893, they were requested by Lord Kimberley, then secretary of state,
to consider a resolution passed by the House of Commons on the 2nd
of that month in favour of the establishment of simultaneous examina-
tions in England and India for admission to the Indian Civil Service,
all competitors "to be finally classed in one list according to merit".
In transmitting the resolution to India, Lord Kimberley pointed out
the necessity of always retaining an adequate number of Europeans
in the service. Lord Lansdowne's government replied on the ist of
the following November, after consulting the provincial administra-
tions. Their letter, which was laid before parliament,^ dealt fully and
frankly with the important issues involved. Quoting the opinions of
notable administrators, they maintained that material reduction of
the European staff then employed was incompatible with the safety
of British rule.
1 Pari. Papers, 1894, Accounts (10), lx, i-iio.
SIMULTANEOUS EXAMINATIONS 369
Sir Charles Crosthwaite, lieutenant-governor of the North-Westem
Provinces, had observed:
It is a great mistake to suppose that British India has arrived at a stage where
nothing but smooth progress need be anticipated, or to think that the principles of
law and order have penetrated the minds of the people so deeply that the English
element in the civil government may be safely diminished. We know little of what
is below the surface; but we know enough, even without the teaching of recent
events here, in Bombay, and in Rangoon, to be sure that this is not a true estimate
of the situation. It is instructive to observe that during the late riots in Bombay
native papers like the Hindu Patriot, while demanding in one column a larger share
of administrative appointments for their fellow-countrymen, were calling out in
another column of the same issue against the government for not having more
European police officers in Bombay. What is desired by them is that the British
Government should hold the country, while they administer it.*
The writer laid stress on the existence of strong Muhammadan
opposition to any such arrangement. Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick,
lieutenant-governor of the Panjab, had said:
British rule brought this country out of a state of chaos, the horrors of which it
would be difficult for a stay-at-home resident of Europe in the nineteenth century
adequately to realise, and if the grasp of the British power were relaxed even for
a brief moment over any part of the country, chaos with all its horrors would come
again. Englishmen, even Englishmen who spend their lives in India, are not given
to reflecting much on this; and I doubt whether many natives of the country
nowadays think of it though it was a good deal present to the minds of the people
of the Punjab when I first came to India. The fact is that we have now had 35 years
of internal peace unbroken except by petty local disturbances, and we have begun
to flatter ourselves into the belief that our position in this country is absolutely
unassailable; but as a matter of fact it is not so. It is, and always will be, liable to
disastrous shocks from which it might take a long time to recover; and although
this is not a pleasant subject of reflection to us, with our national vanity and our
tendency to optimism, the more completely we realise it the better.
The writer pointed out that apart from the danger of religious riots
there were always to be found in many parts of India predatory classes
ready to break out whenever British administration might be tem-
porarily relaxed or British control disorganised. He observed that it
was a mistake to suppose that the substitution of Indian for British
administrators would be popular with the masses; its popularity
would be limited to the advanced Indians, a small fraction of the
population. 2
Lord Lansdowne's government reported that the government of
Madras alone advocated the principle of the resolution, observing that
in special emergencies, local disturbances and the like, Indians en-
tering the civil service might possibly be found wanting, but the mis-
chief thus arising could in present circumstances quickly be repaired.
"This", said the Government of India, "might represent the state of
things in the tranquil province of Madras, but the conditions of other
parts of India were far different." They went on to urge that a
* Pari. Papers, 1894, Accounts (10), lx, 39.
2 Idem, pp. 42-55. Gf. Mahmud, History of English Education in India, pp. 182-7.
c H I VI 24
370 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
system of unrestricted competition in examination would not only
dangerously weaken the British element in the civil service but would
also practically exclude from the service Muhammadans, Sikhs and
other races accustomed to rule by tradition and possessed of excep-
tional strength of character, but deficient in literary education. The
natives, moreover, of one part of India would from their dispositions,
ways and habits, be ill-fitted to discharge the duties of civil officers in
another part. As far as Indians generally were concerned, probation
by actual employment formed a competitive examination of the best
kind. Much misapprehension apparently prevailed as to the extent
to which natives of India were already employed in responsible
executive and judicial offices. Taking the years 1870, 1881 and 1893
as convenient points from which the progress of the scheme for the
more liberal employment of Indians could be reviewed, the first
because it was the year when recruitment for the Indian Civil Service
was reduced by one-sixth, the following figures were significant :
The Covenanted} Civil Service
(i) Covenanted Civilians
(2) Military, Uncovenanted and Statutory Civilians
Total
The Provincial Service
(i) Executive Branch
(2) Judicial Branch
Total
The Subordinate Service
It must be remembered that between 1881 and 1893 the annexation
of Upper Burma had entailed a considerable demand for covenanted
officers, and that the inevitable increase of public business which had
occurred in twenty-three years had called for reinforcements in almost
every branch of the administration; yet the whole strength of the
covenanted service (including military and uncovenanted and
"statutory" civilians, holding covenanted posts) was now seven less
than in the former year and 107 less than in 1870. The number of
covenanted civil servants would have been further reduced but for
a process, which had been going on since 1870, of substituting, in
the interests of greater efficiency, covenanted for military and un-
covenanted officers in the non-regulation provinces. The European
service was now at its minimum strength, and no further reduction
would be practicable for some years to come. In the event, however,
of experience showing that in any province, at any time, the number
of high Indian officers might safely be increased, the best course would
be to proceed under the statute of 1870 and on the lines of the changes
recently accomplished. Seventy-four of the 898 covenanted civil
• . * I.e. Imperial.
1870
1881
1893
890
900
898
331
221
216
1 22 I
I 121
III4
576
726
1030
583
679
797
I 159
1405
1827
962
1368
1908
EXCHANGE COMPENSATION 371
servants were employed in special departments not concerned with
the general judicial and executive administration of the country;
ninety-three covenanted posts had just been assigned to the provincial
service; thus the cadre of posts at present reserved for Indian civil
servants and military officers was only 731. In the frontier provinces,
the Panjab, Burma and Assam, one-fourth of the covenanted posts
were reserved for military officers of special experience. On the
quality of this small number of men depended the quiet and orderly
government of 217I millions of people, inhabiting 943,000 square
miles of territory. Upon these men, and not immediately on military
force, British rule rested.^
The views expressed in this dispatch prevailed with Her Majesty's
government. The secretary of state, Mr H. H. Fowler, decided that
by far the best way of meeting the legitimate claims and aspirations
of Indians was to bestow such of the higher posts as could be made
available for them "on those who distinguish themselves by their
capacity and trustworthiness in the performance of subordinate
duties". There were insuperable objections to the establishment of a
system of simultaneous examinations. ^
Early in the 'nineties an increasing fall in the exchange value of the
rupee necessitated the consideration of measures for the reform of the
currency and inflicted considerable hardship upon European officers
in the imperial services. In 1893 the government of Lord Lansdowne,
with the consent of the secretary of state, deciding that a remedy must
be applied, ordered that exchange compensation allowance should
be paid to every European and Anglo-Indian officer of the govern-
ment, not being a statutory native of India, to be calculated on the
difference between the gold value of half his salary at the market rate
of exchange and its value at a privileged rate, which for the time was
fixed at i^. 6d. per rupee, and was limited to a sum not exceeding in
any quarter the amount of rupees by which jf 250 converted at the
privileged rate fell short of the equivalent of ;^250 converted at a
market rate. In time the exchange value of the rupee settled down to
i^. 4.d. approximately, so the concession represented an addition of
6i per cent, to all salaries of Rs. 2222 a month and under. To salaries
in excess of this amount a fixed monthly addition of Rs. 138. 14. 3
was made. The whole arrangement went some way, but only some
way, to relieve the growing difficulties which a falling rupee and rising
prices were bringing to those numerous servants of the government
who were under the necessity of making regular remittances to England
for the maintenance of their families.
In the period 1 894- 1 905 the work of the services became increasingly
complex and arduous. The population of India was fast rising; trade
and commerce were growing; education was extending; contact with
England was increasing ; political agitation was beginning to produce
1 Pari. Papers, 1894, Accounts (10), lx, 5-6. a Public Dispatch, 19 April, 1894.
24-2
372 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
unrest. India was visited with devastating plague epidemics and
attacked by three famines, one resuhing from a drought of an extent
and intensity unknown for two centuries. The services responded
keenly to the needs of difficult occasions and to the quickening in-
fluence of Lord Gurzon's ardent spirit.
He regarded police reform as "one of the most urgent needs of
Indian administration ".^ With the approval of the secretary of state,
his government on 9 July, 1902, appointed a commission which was
presided over by the late Sir Andrew Eraser and reported on 30 May,
1903, that throughout India the police-force was in a most unsatis-
factory condition and that abuses were common everywhere, in-
volving injury to the people and discredit to the government. Radical
reforms were urgently necessary and would be costly because the
department had hitherto been starved.
The commissioners unanimously recommended that the pay of all
ranks should be raised. It was impossible to expect honest and faithful
service from low-paid inspectors and constables subject to great
temptations. It was equally futile to attract high-class recruits from
England for the higher grades, by the offer of meagre salaries and
prospects. After considering this and other beneficial suggestions, the
Government of India decreed on 21 March, 1905, that in future the
force should consist of an imperial branch recruited in Europe and
provincial branches recruited in India. The former would be known
as the "Indian Police Service". It was intended for supervision and
would contain only so many officers as were required to fill the
superintendentships of the districts and posts of equivalent or higher
standing, and to supply a leave and training reserve of assistant super-
intendents. Provincial services of deputy-superintendents would be
recruited to carry on the less important duties of administration.
Promotion from them to superintendentships in the Indian Police
Service would only be given as a reward for special merit to selected
individuals. The ordinary method of recruitment for the Indian
Police Service would be by competitive examination in London.
Candidates must be above nineteen and under twenty-one years of
age. Every candidate must be a British subject of European descent,
and at the time of his birth his father must have been a British subject
either natural-born or naturalised in the United Kingdom. In ex-
ceptional cases, on the special recommendation of a local government,
the governor-general in council could make direct appointments to
the police service from amongst Europeans domiciled in India, in-
cluding those of mixed descent, subject to the condition that the
candidate put forward had attained an adequate standard of educa-
tional qualifications. This power, however, was seldom exercised.
Candidates successful in the competitive examination in England
would leave that country at once for India where they would undergo
* Fourth Budget Speech, Raleigh, Curzon in India, p. 104.
POLICE REFORM 373
two years of probation and training. After successfully passing through
this ordeal they would be posted to district work.
The police-force and its armed reserves were increased, in order to
render them more capable of preserving internal peace if the country
were at war. A "Department of Criminal Intelligence" was created
which was charged with the duty of investigating special forms of
crime, including political offences, and took the place of the obsolete
" Thagi and Dacoity Department ". When speaking on his last budget,
Lord Curzon summed up his ideas and answered his critics in these
words:
There is entered in the budget the sum of 50 lakhs for police reform. That is only
an instalment and a beginning. We accept with slight modifications the full recom-
mendation of the committee and we intend to carry out their programme. We
want a police force which is free from the temptation to corruption and iniquity,
and which must therefore be reasonably well paid, which must be intelligent, and
orderly and efficient, and which will make its motto protection instead of oppression.
I confess that my heart breaks within me when I see long diatribes upon how many
natives are getting employment under the new system and how many Europeans.
The police force in India must be an overwhelmingly native force; and I would
make it representative of the best elements in native character and native life.
Equally must it have a European supervising element, and let this also be of the
best. But do not let us proceed to reckon one against the other, and contend as to
who loses and who gains. The sole object of all of us ought to be the good of the
country and the protection of the people.^
Seven years later the police were again the subject of special
enquiry. The verdict of another public services commission, whose
report was published in 191 7, was that the police reforms of 1905 had
been "on the whole successful, but that hardly sufficient time had
elapsed thoroughly to test their efficiency". Within these seven years,
however, in various provinces, the police of all ranks had been called
to deal with subterranean revolutionary conspiracy and had acquitted
themselves remarkably well.
Early in his viceroyalty Lord Curzon took charge of the public
works department in order to obtain a grasp of the business. He then
decided to set up a Railway Board "as the indispensable condition of
business-like management and quick and intelligent control". The
board was established in 1905, and the railway branch of the public
works department was abolished; but public works and railway
engineers were still recruited through the same agency. In the public
works department there were henceforth two main sections, one con-
cerned with schemes of irrigation and the other with the construction,
repair and maintenance of roads, buildings and bridges. Public
works and railways included an imperial and a provincial service,
both of which were in times of pressure assisted by temporary en-
gineers recruited for the most part in India. In 1906 the residential
engineering college which had been established at Cooper's Hill in
1873 was abolished, as an unnecessary expense, for it appeared that
* Raleigh, op. cit. p. i6o.
374 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
recruits might be obtained from the other engineering institutions of
Great Britain. From that time appointments to the superior en-
gineering estabUshments of the public works and railway department
were made on the nomination of the secretary of state, with the advice
of a specially constituted selection committee. Candidates were
between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-four, and must produce
evidence of superior qualifications.^
The separate organisation for the accounts work of the public works
department was in 1910 amalgamated with the civil accounts branch
of the Indian finance department.
Lord Curzon's interest in the services was by no means confined to
the police and the public works department. By his indomitable
energy, by his personal example, by his thorough-going sympathy, he
did far more for the services generally than any other viceroy had
ever done. His special care was for the political department which
contained separate cadres for military and civil officers, and is the
direct successor of "the diplomatic line"^ in which Mountstuart
Elphinstone and other servants of the East India Company, civil and
military, won their spurs. In Lord Curzon's words :
"There is no more varied or responsible service in the world. At one moment
the political may be grinding in the Foreign Office, at another he may be required
to stiffen the administration of a backward native state, at a third he may be
presiding over a jirga of unruly tribesmen on the frontier, at a fourth he may be
demarcating a boundary amid the wilds of Tibet or the sands of Seistan." " I hope ",
he added, " that the time may never come when the political department will cease
to draw to itself the best abilities and the finest characters that the services in India
can produce."
But all the services, imperial, provincial and subordinate, received
his constant attention, for he believed that by raising their standard
and tone "the contentment of the governed could be promoted". In
this way only could the people be "affected in their homes ". He was
deeply concerned at "the interminable writing " which had grown up^
in the administration and threatened "to extinguish all personality,
or initiative or dispatch, under mountains of manuscript and print ".^
It synchronised, he said, with the great development of communica-
tions, and more especially of the telegraph; in other words, it was the
product of modern centralisation. He claimed to have reduced the
total number of obligatory reports to government from nearly 1300
to a litde over 1000 and the pages of letter-press and statistics from
35,400 to 20,000, "an immense saving of work to overburdened men
and no sacrifice of value in the reports themselves".* First among
viceroys he tried to roll back this ever-advancing deluge, fully realising
that too much writing means too little reflecdon and far too litde
^ The Report oft/ie Public Service Commission, 191 7, p. 330.
2 Colebrooke, Mountstuart Elphinstone, i, 22.
' Raleigh, op. cit. p. 78; Ronaldshay, Curzon, 11, 62.
* Raleigh, op. cit. pp. 1 16-1 7.
MILITARY OFFICERS IN BURMA 375
intercourse with the people. But in fact another incubus was bearing
heavily upon the judges, the district officers, and their assistants. The
multiplication of lawyers, the mounting files of cases, the prolonged
trials, were tying them to their desks. In Bengal especially,^ they
were in a grip which Lord Gurzon did not shake, the grip of a
devouring machine. While, too, he was fully aware of the pernicious
effects of over-centralisation, his temperament, his close attention to
detail, his anxiety to strengthen every branch of the administration
to meet the onset of new forces,^ made him a centraliser.^ One of his
most important administrative achievements was the reorganisation
of the agricultural department which he set on the path of fruitful
advance. The breadth of his sympathies is attested by a farewell
address from the clerks of the secretariat of the Government of India,
expressing warm gratitude because, while absorbed in the momentous
problems of state policy, he had never "lost an opportunity of
ameliorating the condition of the very large body of public servants
known by the general name of the uncovenanted service".
His successor's government endeavoured to put an end to the
recruitment of military officers for civil posts in Burma. Such
recruitment had already ceased in other provinces, and was now
regarded as an anachronism at headquarters. This idea, however,
was vigorously disputed by the Government of Burma, which wrote
on 17 October, 1906:
The restriction of recruitment to members of the Indian Civil Service would no
doubt raise the level of academic qualifications. The lieutenant-governor is not
prepared to assent to the proposition that it v^ould raise the intellectual level.
Officers of the Indian Army are gentlemen of education and selected officers of
that army are probably not deficient intellectually. Moreover pure intellect is not
the sole qualification required of administrators. Resource, force of character,
knowledge of and sympathy with the people, are also elements of value. In these
respects officers of the Indian Army have attained and are likely to attain a high
position. Sir Herbert White does not regard uniformity in itself as an object of
desire. On the contrary, he considers that diversity of gifts is an advantage. In
such a province as Burma, the work is of a very varied nature and officers of diverse
qualifications can be utilised. An officer may be of exceptional value in a revenue
or judicial appointment, and yet be less well adapted than others for service in
Shan States or frontier districts. Similarly an officer may be capable of rendering
invaluable service in frontier tracts and yet be ''"ss suited than his comrades for
employment in settled districts. Even if uniformii) were desirable, it had not been
found by experience that it is secured in the Indian Civil Sei-vice. . . . The limited
recruitment of military officers allowed by the present system has given to the
commission many officers of exceptional capacity and merit, and may be expected
to do so in future.
The soundness of these contentions was practically admitted by the
Government of India, which dropped the proposal.
From 1905 onwards circumstances gradually developed which
combined to lower the popularity of the Indian Civil Services among
^ Cf. Report of the Sedition (Rowlatt) Committee^ paragraph 172.
2 Raleigh, op. cit. p. 487. See also p. 565.
3 Ronaldshay, op. cit. 11, 189, 193, 253.
376 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
the youth of England. While work became more exacting and seemed
less likely to afford scope for initiative, the general price level which
had risen about 32 per cent, between 1894 and the period from 1905
to 1909 rose another 5 per cent, between 1910 and 191 2. The political
barometer was unsteady, and the general outlook did not inspire the
buoyant confidence of former days. By degrees things slipped into a
position which led the under-secretary of state to suggest in the House
of Commons that the Indian Civil Service was only getting the leavings
of the Home Civil Service,^ Meantime the interests of another pivot
service had been seriously menaced, for, anxious to foster the growth
of an independent medical profession in India by transferring to
private practitioners some of the posts then held by officers of the
Indian Medical Service and undeterred by a half-hearted and in-
conclusive reply from the governor-general in council, ^ Lord Morley
had ruled that the service must be gradually and increasingly manned
by independent medical practitioners recruited in India. The
governor-general in council then roused himself, consulted the local
governments, and replied that he had gravely "underestimated
objections" to the transfer of appointments which was contemplated.
He now considered that
the mere transfer of a certain number of government appointments from the Indian
Medical Service to private practitioners would not materially encourage the growth
of an independent medical profession; that most of the civil appointments then held
by the Indian Medical Service could not suitably be given to men not in regular
government service with whom private practice would necessarily be the first
consideration ; and that the retention of a considerable number of superior civil
medical appointments for the Indian Medical Service was essential not only in the
interests of administrative efficiency, but also for the purpose of making the service
itself attractive to able medical men.
It was important to do nothing which would lower its attractiveness.^
These views commended themselves to Morley's successor, Lord
Crewe ; but the axe had been laid at the root of the tree. Already
rigid restrictions on private fees and practice had diminished the
attractions of a once flourishing service; independent Indian com-
petition was rapidly multiplying; and general circumstances,
already noticed, were affecting the British recruiting market. In
September, 191 3, the secretary of state found himself compelled to
invite the assistance of the British Medical Association in his search
for remedies. The association drew up a memorandum which was laid
before the Public Services Commission appointed in 191 2.
Two years earlier, on 17 March, 191 1, a notable debate had taken
place in the imperial legislative council, on the motion of a non-
official member, which brought to a head the agitation which had
long been growing among politically-minded Indians for a larger
* Hansard, xli, 30 July, 191 2.
* Report of the Medical Services Committfe, 1 919, pp. 13-15.
' Idem.
THE COMMISSION OF 1912 377
share in the public services. Once more the government resorted to
the old expedient, and on 5 September, 191 2, appointed a new public
services commission under the chairmanship of Lord Islington. The
British element included Mr Ramsay Macdonald, Lord Ronaldshay
and Sir Valentine Ghirol ; the Indian, Mr Gokhale and Mr Justice
(now Sir) Abdur Rahim. The commission spent two winters in taking
a mass of evidence from Indians and Europeans all over India; but
in the words of Sir Valentine Ghirol,
Its sittings, held except in very rare cases in public, served chiefly at the time to
stir up Indian opinion by bringing into sharp relief the profound divergencies
between the Indian and the Anglo-Indian point of view, and in a form which on
the one hand, unfortunately, was bound to offend Indian susceptibilities, and on
the other hand was apt to produce the impression that Indians were chiefly
concerned to substitute an indigenous for an alien bureaucracy. ^
The report of the commission was ready in 191 5, but for reasons
connected with the war was not published until 191 7. Its conclusions
were treated as largely obsolete by the authors of the 191 8 report on
constitutional reforms on the ground that a new dispensation had
since begun. The commissioners, however, had drawn a clear and
vivid picture of the conditions which governed the difficult questions
before them.
"All parties recognise the fact that we owe all our present material
and political progress to our connection with England: our future
depends on the stability of British rule in India." These words were
used by an Indian gentleman when addressing a political conference
in the autumn of 19 14, and go far to explain the general attitude of
India throughout the war period. Yet the burden borne by the civil
services was a very heavy one.
Of those members of the imperial services who succeeded in
achieving the ambition of many and were permitted to join the army,
113 died on active service. The Indian Givil Service, the public works,
and the state railways contributed the largest number of officers for
military employment; but all spared as many as they could. Officers
of the Indian Medical Service in civil employ were freely recalled to
military duty and were replaced by Indian temporary captains and
lieutenants. So heavy was the demand for doctors that even as late
as April, 191 9, there were 331 temporary medical officers serving
in India and 354 serving overseas. ^ Recruits from England were
rarely available to fill vacancies among British civil servants caused
by illness or deputation to military duty. The rank and file who re-
mained were immersed in heavy routine duties and extra war-work.
Recruiting for the army, for bearer corps, labour corps and collection
of supplies, made heavy demands on the imperial, provincial and
subordinate civil services alike. When it is remembered that the total
^ India Old and New, p. 134. Gf. Sydenham, My Working Life, p. 229.
2 Report of the Medical Services Committee^ 1919, p. 26.
378 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
of all ranks and personnel embarked at Bombay and Karachi during
the war period numbered 1,302,394, of whom 296,221 were British
and 1,006,173 were Indian, and that 172,815 horses, ponies, mules,
camels, draught bullocks and dairy cattle were sent overseas,^ it will
be realised that the effort to which the services contributed their share
was considerable. The provincial and subordinate services responded
readily to every call made on their energies, and 61 1 2 of the latter were
permitted to undertake military duty.
Revolutionary conspiracy raised its head in the Panjab where it
was thwarted by prompt action, and in Bengal where it was repressed
for a while by strong measures in 1916. In 191 7-18 political agitation
and outbreaks of communal animosity added to the anxieties of the
time. With the armistice our period closes. Since then constitutional
reforms and orders passed on the report of a fresh royal commission
have started the services on a new basis. Indianisation has proceeded
with rapid strides. ^ Yet the spirit of the administration must remain
the same if it is to justify itself to the people of India. Six years ago
a leading Hindu nationalist^ observed in the imperial legislative
assembly that wherever British administration had been established in
India "the domination of stronger over humbler or weaker com-
munities had been checked, put a stop to, prevented". The watchword
of the British Government has in fact been help and fair-play for all.
Because they believed in this watchword officers of the old imperial
services never repented themselves of any effort or any trouble. Their
hearts were in their work. They were content with the purposes for
which they were used. Amid many discouragements they preserved
intact that devotion to duty, that high sense of honour and integrity
which India will always require in her public services if she is really
to go on and prosper.
1 India (Nations of To-day series), p. 200. The figures were supplied by the India Office.
* See India in ig24-^y pp. 65-6.
' The Honourable Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya on 16 February, 1926.
CHAPTER XXI
LAW^REFORM
X H E necessity for reform of the judicial system and of the law had
been recognised long before the transfer of the government of India
to the crown. As section 53 of the Charter Act of 1833 declared, it was
expedient that a general system of judicial establishments and police to which all
persons whatsoever, as well Europeans as natives, might be subject should be
established in the territories subject to the Company at an early period; and that
such laws as might be applicable in common to all classes of the inhabitants of the
said territories, due regard being had to the rights, feelings and peculiar usages of
the people, should be enacted.
This, so far as it related to the judicial system, was the natural result
of experience of the division of jurisdiction between the king's and the
Company's courts. In 1822 Sir Charles Grey, Chief Justice of Bengal,
had pointed out the "utter want of connection between the Supreme
Court and the provincial courts and the two sorts of legal process
which were employed in them"; and Sir Erskine Perry, Chief Justice
of Bombay, referred later to "the strange anomaly in the juris-
prudential condition of British India which consists in the three capital
cities having systems of law different from those of the countries of
which they are the capitals". The inconvenience and delay entailed
by the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts at the presidency towns over
Europeans outside them had been mitigated by the Charter Act of
1 8 1 3. Under it British subjects residing, trading or holding immovable
property more than ten miles outside those towns were made subject
to the local civil courts, although their right of appeal to the Supreme
Courts was preserved; and justices of the peace, until 1832 covenanted
civilians, were appointed to deal with debts due by them not ex-
ceeding Rs. 50 and cases of trespass and assault against them for which
Rs. 500 fine would be sufficient punishment. But more serious cases
had still to be instituted in the Supreme Courts in Bengal and Madras
and the recorder's court in Bombay, which was succeeded by a
Supreme Court in 1823. Attention had moreover been attracted
before 1808 on the one hand to the cumbrous structure of the Supreme
Courts with their common law, equity, admiralty and ecclesiastical
sides, reproducing the separate English jurisdictions, and to the
anomaly of the retention in them of the forms of pleading abandoned
in England in 1852; on the other to the dangers involved in leaving
the administration of justice in the districts to judges without pro-
fessional training, unassisted by any definite or uniform procedure or
38o LAW REFORM
substantive law. The amalgamation of the Supreme and Sadr Courts
and their jurisdictions was clearly essential. But it was only in 1862
that, after delay for the passing of a Code of Civil Procedure for the
new courts and those subordinate to them, the existing Supreme and
Sadr Adalat Courts were abolished and replaced under the Indian
High Courts Act, 1 861, by the new High Courts at Calcutta, Madrais
and Bombay. Under powers given by the act one other High Court
could be established at a place to be selected and in 1866 a High
Court was established at Allahabad to exercise the jurisdiction over
the North- Western Provinces hitherto exercised from Calcutta. No
addition was made to those High Courts until 191 6 when one more
was established at Patna for the province of Bihar and Orissa consti-
tuted on the rearrangement of the province of Bengal in 191 2.
The constitution and powers of the High Courts then created have
remained unaltered in essentials during the period under considera-
tion. The judges are appointed by the crown and hold office during
His Majesty's pleasure. Their number has been increased from time
to time permanently or temporarily to cope with increasing business,
but no change has been made in the provision of the act of 186 1 under
which one- third of the judges in each court are members of the
English, Irish or Scotch bar, one-third members of the Indian Civil
Service, and the remainder persons who have held judicial office in
India for five years or have practised as pleaders at a High Court for
ten. On its appellate side each of those courts exercises the jurisdiction
inherited from the Sadr Court over the districts and on its original
side that of the Supreme Court over the presidency town where it sits.
The exclusive jurisdiction over British subjects in the districts in
serious criminal cases was abolished with the Supreme Courts in 1861,
special provisions for their protection being included in the Code of
Criminal Procedure. The provisions of the act of 1781, rendered
necessary by the Patna and Kossijura cases and the conffict between
the Supreme Court and the governor-general's council, were re-
enacted, matters concerning the revenue, its collection in accordance
with the law or usage of the country and the official acts of the
governor-general, the provincial governors and the members of their
councils, being excluded from the High Courts' original jurisdiction.
The territorial jurisdiction of the High Courts has since their creation
remained substantially unchanged except in the case of Calcutta,
comprising in the case of each the province it belongs to, and, for the
purpose of exercise of its powers over British subjects, such adjoining
native states as the governor-general in council may direct under
the Foreign Jurisdiction Act, 1890. By orders in council under the
act the High Court of Bombay also exercises powers over Zanzibar
and the Persian coast.
In the other or non-regulation provinces, where no Supreme Courts
had been established, judicial arrangements had been made in the
CHIEF COURTS 381
first instance, as territories were acquired and occasion arose. But the
necessity for a reconstruction of the courts there was now clear. The
court of the chief commissioner was accordingly established in 1863
for Burma with recorders exercising unlimited civil and criminal
powers at Rangoon and Moulmein, these being replaced in 1872,
respectively, by a judge and a small cause court subordinate to the
commissioner. In 1896 a separate judicial commissioner with civil
powers was appointed for Upper Burma and in 1900 a chief court
was created for Lower Burma, comprising four judges of whom two
(including the chief judge) were to be barristers. The court of the
judicial commissioner of the Panjab was superseded in 1866 by the
chief court and between 1861 and 1868 courts were established also
for Sind, Aden, the Central Provinces, Oudh and Coorg. The judges
of these courts are appointed by the governor-general and hold office
during his pleasure.
The development since 1 858 of the inferior courts, civil and criminal,
followed its natural course. It is worth notice that litigation relating
to agricultural tenancies was dealt with by revenue officers as courts
of first instance in Madras throughout and in Bombay until 1 866, when
the jurisdiction was transferred to the civil courts. In Bengal it had
since 1831 been with the revenue officers, although their decisions
were merely provisional and subject as to determination of rents and
in cases of ejectment to those of the civil courts. In 1859 the revenue
courts were given sole jurisdiction, but in 1 869 that of the civil courts
was restored. Finally legislation in 1885 and 1898 left the revenue
courts with control only over settlement and rates of rent. For the
rest the tendency in the organisation of the criminal courts has been
towards the employment of separate officers for magisterial and
revenue duties, when that is consistent with economy and adminis-
trative convenience ; and efforts have been made to restore the exercise
of judicial powers in petty cases by village headmen and village courts
to a regular and definite footing.
It was part of the scheme for the reorganisation of the judicial
system that the creation of the new High Courts should be postponed
until, in the words of Sir C. Wood, "a code of short and simple pro-
cedure had been prepared " in order that " a simple system of pleading
and practice uniform, so far as possible, throughout the whole juris-
diction, might be adopted and one capable also of being applied in
the inferior courts of India". The Code of Civil Procedure enacted
in these circumstances was the first instalment of the earliest com-
prehensive attempt at codification in the British Empire. To the un-
derstanding of the circumstances in which that attempt was made and
of the value of the result, some account of the law administered under
the Supreme and Sadr Courts is essential.
According to a general description given in 1 829 by the judges of
the Supreme Court of Calcutta,
382 LAW REFORM
no one could then pronounce an opinion or form a judgment, however sound, upon
any disputed right regarding which doubt and confusion might not be raised by
those who might choose to call it in question ; for very few of the pubHc or persons
in office at home, not even the law officers, could be expected to have so clear and
comprehensive a knowledge of the Indian system as to know familiarly the working
of each part on the rest. There were English acts of parliament specially provided
for India and others of which it was doubtful whether they applied to India wholly
or in part or not at all. There was the English conmion law and constitution of
which the application was in many respects most obscure and perplexed; Mahome-
dan law and usage; Hindu law, usage and scripture; charters and letters patent of
the courts ; and regulations of the government, some requiring registration in the
Supreme Courts, others not, whilst some had effect throughout India and others
were peculiar to one presidency or one town. There were commissions of the govern-
ments and circular orders from the Nizamat Adalat and from the Diwani Adalat,
treaties of the Crown, treaties of the Indian Government, besides inferences drawn
at pleasure from the droit public and the law of nations of Europe to a state of cir-
cumstances which will justify almost any construction of it or qualification of its
force.
More definitely, we find that as regards procedure the Supreme
Courts with their common law, equity, ecclesiastical and admiralty
sides had adopted on each the appropriate English practice, except
that the viva voce examination of witnesses was taken down completely
in writing. In the inferior courts the English procedure was followed
except that written pleadings were dispensed with. In the Sadr
Courts and in the districts suits were dealt with, in Bengal mainly
under a code enacted by Lord Cornwallis in 1793, resembling rather
the equity or even the Scotch system than the common law; in each
of the other provinces under its own regulations of somewhat later
date. In these courts pleadings in writing were required ; but in many
cases, as no particular forms for them were prescribed, they did not
serve the purpose of bringing the parties to a distinct issue. No strict
rule was followed as to the production of evidence, lists of witnesses
and documents being brought in from time to time according to the
party's convenience. In Bengal a regulation of 18 14 no doubt re-
quired the court to formulate the points to be determined; but this
was much neglected. The depositions of witnesses were not recorded
by the judge or magistrate, but were taken in his presence, sometimes
more than one by different clerks simultaneously, and at the first
hearing he sometimes himself perused them and the pleadings, some-
times heard them read by a subordinate who might or might not
reproduce them correctly. There were further other summary forms
of procedure for cases of small importance in which speedy disposal
was desirable. The law of evidence had in the presidency towns
followed English developments; by an important innovation in 1852
parties were allowed to give evidence except on proceedings for
adultery and breach of promise of marriage, and could be compelled
to allow inspection of documents. In the districts the courts followed
the English law, so far as it was accessible to them, although they were
not bound by it, and also an indefinite customary law derived from
LEGAL ANOMALIES 383
a Muhammadan treatise, the Hidaya, and the Muhammadan law
officers; and there were regulations dealing with a few special points.
But in 1853 in Bengal the law recently enacted for the presidency town
was applied to tlie Company's courts and two years later a longer act
was passed, containing many valuable rules, although it was not
exhaustive or logically expressed or arranged. In the Supreme Courts
and others in the presidency towns the substantive law, civil and
criminal, was, so far as it was applicable, that of England, except in
cases between natives, relating to contract, succession, and inheritance,
where the Hindu or Muhammadan law was applied according to the
religion of the parties or of the defendant in case their religions were
different. But in the districts the law was entirely devoid of uni-
formity and system. In Bengal after 1 772, and later in other provinces,
the administration of justice had engaged the Company's attention,
the course taken being to leave matters of marriage, inheritance,
succession and caste to be dealt with by the Hindu, Muhammadan or
other customary law to which the parties might be subject, to deal
with other matters in accordance with justice, equity and good con-
science, an expression naturally interpreted by English judges as
meaning the English law adapted, as far as might be, to local con-
ditions, and to continue the Muhammadan criminal law, which had,
especially in Bengal, been applied since the Muhammadan conquest.
There had of course been legislation during the ensuing eighty years,
but on particular points and in rare instances. For example, when
the law of contracts was codified in 1872, it was necessary to repeal
only seven Indian acts, of which three related solely to the Company's
trade, and the codification of the law of transfer of property in 1882
involved the repeal of only eight acts, three of which had been passed
before 1856, and three local regulations. In these circumstances the
law administered in the Company's courts was not likely to be uniform
or certain. In criminal matters the case was different, mainly because
some portions of the Muhammadan law were necessarily superseded
by statute, as unenforceable by a western government. For instance
retaliatory mutilation as a sentence, the loss of a limb for a limb, had
been abolished in 1793; but it was only in 1825 that women were
exempted from flogging, and in 1849 that branding was replaced by
imprisonment as a punishment for perjury. In the Panjab a manual
of criminal law was issued by the executive as a guide to the magi-
stracy, and in Bombay a code had been passed in 1827, which,
however, in the opinion of Macaulay and his Law Commission de-
served even severer criticism than the more miscellaneous systems
established by the various laws and regulations in other provinces.
This fortuitous and unscientific legislation resulted inevitably in
illogical classification of offences and apportionment of penalties.
Thus in Bengal serious forgeries were punishable with a term of
imprisonment double that fixed for perjury ; in Bombay the rule was
384 LAW REFORM
the reverse; and in Madras both offences were treated alike. In
Bombay the escape of a convict was punished with imprisonment
double that imposed in the other provinces, whilst coining was punish-
able with little more than half the term assigned for the offence else-
where. In Bengal the unlicensed vendor of stamps was liable to a
moderate fine and in Madras to a short term of imprisonment, whilst
in Bombay he and also the purchaser (who elsewhere committed no
offence) were liable to five years' imprisonment and also to flogging.
General recognition of the uncertain, localised and on the criminal
side arbitrary character of the systems thus established had led to the
reference already quoted in the act of 1833 to the expediency of
ascertaining and consolidating the law and to the further provision
for the appointment of an Indian Law Commission to enquire and
from time to time to make reports which were to be transmitted by the
governor-general in council with his opinion to the court of directors
and to be laid before parliament. The commission thus constituted
was composed of Macaulay, the first member appointed to the council
for legislative purposes, and a civilian from each of the presidencies.
It first under the instructions of government busied itself with the
draft of a Penal Code, completing it before Macaulay 's departure
from India in 1837. Subsequently, however, it confined itself to the
periodical issue of reports, containing proposals on which legislation
has since been founded, and became defunct after submitting a draft
limitation law in 1842 and a scheme of pleading and procedure with
forms of criminal indictments in 1848. It was succeeded by a body of
commissioners appointed in England under the Charter Act of 1 853
to examine and report on its recommendations within three years.
The commission included Sir John Romilly, Master of the Rolls ;
Sir John Jervis, Chief Justice of Common Pleas; Mr Lowe, afterwards
Lord Sherbrooke; Mr Cameron, known as a disciple of Bentham; and
other members with Indian experience; and its first duty was the
preparation of the Code of Civil Procedure, pending which the erection
of the new High Courts had been postponed. This code, as it was
passed in 1859, did not apply to the Supreme Courts, but the greater
part of it was extended to the High Courts by their letters patent in
1862. The law of limitation and prescription was next taken up; and
in 1 859 a bill drafted by the first Indian Law Commission and revised
by the second became law. In i860 the Penal Code, based on the
draft proposed by Macaulay's commission and revised by Mr Bethune,
the legal member of council, and Sir Barnes Peacock, was passed. It
was followed in 1861 by a Code of Criminal Procedure for the courts
other than those in the presidency towns, where the English procedure
was retained until the passing of acts for the High Courts in 1875 and
for the magistrates* courts in 1877.
The prominent and distinctive features of the procedure, civil and
criminal, thus introduced may be mentioned at once, for they have
THE CODES 385
remained unchanged in the numerous subsequent revisions of the law.
Both codes followed in the main the English procedure, some pro-
visions in the Civil Procedure Code being adopted in substance from
the Common Law Procedure Act, 1852. There is no jury in civil
actions in the districts. The pleadings are not required to be, but may
be, in writing. In every case the framing of issues is obligatory and
a written judgment stating the points for decision and, except in petty
cases, giving reasons for the decision on each, is required. One appeal,
except in petty cases, is allowed on the facts; on the law petty cases
can be brought before the High Court and others can be taken in
appeal to the district court and the High Court or to the latter in case
the former or a court of concurrent jurisdiction with it has held the
trial. Imprisonment is one method provided for the recovery of sums
decreed, the maximum period having originally been two years and
the minimum three months; but these periods were reduced in 1882
to six months and six weeks. Both codes contain clear provisions for
preparation of the record of evidence by the hand of the judge or
magistrate. The Criminal Procedure Code deals, not only with the
actual trial, but also with the preventive proceedings and the police
investigations. It allows in all but petty cases an appeal on fact and
law, and also provides machinery by which questions of law can in
all cases be brought before the High Court. Indian conditions further
made it necessary to enable the government to appeal against ac-
quittals. The most important innovation was, however, the extension
of trial by jury. It had in accordance with English procedure been
the method of trial in the presidency towns from the beginning, the
grand jury then having been abolished in 1865. It was now applied
to such districts and in respect of such offences as the government
might direct, the normal procedure in the absence of such directions
being trial by the judge with the aid of assessors. The number of jurors
in the High Court is nine and in the districts is fixed by the govern-
ment, but must not be more than nine or less than three. The verdict
of six jurors in the High Court or a majority in the districts can in the
discretion of the judge be accepted. In the districts the judge is
however at liberty, in any case in which he thinks it necessary for the
ends of justice, to submit a unanimous verdict for the consideration
of the High Court, which may set the verdict aside and order a retrial
or at once convict or acquit. Trial by jury was on the passing of the
code applied only in a few districts of Bengal and Madras to the less
serious offences, and it was more than ten years before it was sub-
stantially extended. It has been applied in some provinces even to
the most serious crimes against the person, but in others, Madras and
the United Provinces, it has been restricted, entirely or almost so, to
offences against property.
In 1 861 a third commission was constituted, again in England, which
included among its members Sir J. Romilly, Lord Chief Justice Erie,
386 LAW REFORM
Mr Justice Willes, and later Messrs, afterwards Lord Justices, James
and Lush. The first result of their labours was a draft law of succession,
which was carried through the council in 1 865 by Sir Henry Maine,
as law member. They then submitted proposals relating to the law of
contracts, negotiable instruments, evidence, transfer of property and
the revision of the Code of Criminal Procedure. But the criticism to
which their Contract Bill was subjected in select committee of the
council and the failure of the government to proceed with their other
recommendations led to their resignation in 1870; and until 1879 the
work of codification with that of the consolidation of the law applicable
to each province was carried on by the law member. Sir James
Stephen was thus responsible in 1871 for a new Limitation Act and in
1872 for a revised Criminal Procedure Code, an Evidence Act and
a Contract Act based, though with important amendments, on the
commissioners' draft; and Mr, afterwards Lord, Hobhouse in 1877 for
the Specific Relief Act. The secretary of state had since 1875 been
pressing for the completion of codes for the remaining branches of the
law, and had suggested the appointment of a small English committee.
But the Government of India, recognising the growing public appre-
hension that codification might be proceeding too fast, made good its
contention that it should retain responsibility for decisions as to the
occasion for and nature of further progress ; and Sir Whitley Stokes
as law member. Sir Charles Turner and Sir Raymond West were
appointed commissioners, their first duty being to consider certain
draft bills already prepared. Their labours resulted in the passing in
1 88 1 and 1882 of measures dealing with negotiable instruments,
private trusts, transfer of property and easements. A Guardians and
Wards Act was added in 1890, and a Provincial Insolvency Act in
1 908 to supersede the provisions of the Civil Procedure Code which
had hitherto provided the very rudimentary insolvency law applicable
outside the presidency towns. No further additions of importance
were made to the system thus created. The codification of the law of
master and servant and the law of torts has been considered, draft
bills having been prepared, for the former by the third Law Com-
mission and for the latter in 1886 in England by Sir Frederick Pollock.
But neither has been carried farther, the one because the stringent
penal clauses in the draft were considered open to objection and the
other because in the districts the cases arising from that branch of the
law were neither numerous nor complex and in the presidency towns
the more competent bench and bar found the common law sufficient.
The law of agricultural tenancy which is not dealt with in the Transfer
of Property Act did not call for codification, since it depended on
local considerations and was dealt with by the local legislatures.
The extent to which revision of those codes has been found necessary
affords one test of their success. Allowance must no doubt be made
for the natural reluctance of the government to remove obscurities of
REVISIONS OF THE CODES 387
language which had been made plain by judicial interpretation and
in respect of which no conflict of opinion between the different High
Courts has arisen. But it is satisfactory that only comparatively few
amendments and additions to only three of the codes dealing with
substantive law, the Contract Act, the Transfer of Property Act and
the Penal Code, have been called for. On the other hand the law
relating to procedure, in which the earliest experiments were made
and in which mistakes would most easily be discovered in the light of
experience, has required more than the normal periodical revision.
The Civil Procedure Code of 1859, after four amending acts in the
next four years, further amendments in 1877 and a revision of over
one hundred sections in 1879, was replaced by revised codes in 1882
and 1908, this last retaining the fundamental provisions of its pre-
decessor and, in accordance with the scheme of the English Judicature
Act of 1873, substituting for the others rules which can be modified
by a Rule Committee in each province with the sanction of the local
government. The first Code of Criminal Procedure was after four
amendments succeeded by revised codes in 1872, 1882 and 1898,
there having been sixteen amending acts between the two last men-
tioned. Only one of these calls for notice as representing any new
departure in principle. In 1883 the law member, Mr (afterwards Sir)
Courtney Ilbert, introduced a bill withdrawing entirely the privilege
hitherto enjoyed by every European British subject in the districts of
trial only by a sessions judge or justice of the peace of his own race.
But in deference to strong expressions of European public opinion the
bill, as it became law, withdrew this privilege merely to the extent of
conferring jurisdiction in such cases on all sessions judges and district
magistrates of whatever race as well as on justices of the peace, being
magistrates of the highest class, and European British subjects; a
European British subject on trial before a district magistrate was
enabled to claim a jury of which at least half the members might be
Europeans or Americans; the sentences which those courts could
inflict were still limited, though enhanced in the case of district
magistrates, and committal to the High Courts was still necessary in
case a penalty more severe was required.
The sources of the law stated in the codes were various. The Penal
Code for instance was influenced by the French Code Penal and the
Louisiana Code which had lately been published, when Macaulay's
commission completed its labours ; and the Contract Act, perhaps the
least successful of the series, reproduced important provisions of the
draft New York Code, a model of questionable value. But the founda-
tion was throughout the English common law, adapted, as necessity
required, to Indian conditions and divested, as far as possible, of
technicalities. Thus the Penal Code authorises an alternative sentence
of transportation for life in cases of murder, and deals with offences
against property without reference to the English law of larceny or
25-2
388 LAW REFORM
fine distinctions regarding possession ; and the Succession and Transfer
of Property Acts disregard the English distinction between the legal
incidents of real and personal property and depart in material respects
from the English rules against perpetuities and accumuladon. The
drafdng and arrangement of the codes are substantially in accordance
with the practice of parliamentary draftsmen of the present day and,
if, particularly in those dealing with procedure, the result is sometimes
unsatisfactory, that must be ascribed mainly to an inevitable failure
to foresee and provide for exceptional cases and to the use of language
which no doubt attains in appearance the ideals of simplicity and
lucidity, but does so in some instances at the expense of accuracy and
comprehensiveness. One expedient calls for notice as an experiment
regarding the success of which opinions have differed, the use of illus-
trations, concrete examples appended to particular definitions or
provisions. This innovation was due to a suggestion of Bentham and
to the initiative of Macaulay. It was defended in connection with the
Penal Code by his commission, on the ground that "when each
definition is followed by a collection of cases falling under it and of
cases which, though at first sight they seem to fall under it, do not
really do so, the definition and the reasons for it may be readily
understood"; and it was generally the case that the illustrations
"made nothing law which would not have been law without them"
and were merely instances of" the application of the written law to the
affairs of mankind". So used, it may be doubted whether they are
required by the competent judge or practitioner. But in the later
codes, as the framers of the Succession Act pointed out, they were the
equivalent of decided cases and "an important part of the law, settling
points which without them would have been left to be determined by
the judges"; and this is particularly applicable to that act and the
Contract and Specific Relief Acts, where many of the illustrations
simply reproduce decisions of the English courts, which it was desired
to adopt. The innovation has not been followed in any subsequent
codification of importance. Its real justification was that the majority
of the judges and magistrates who were to administer the codes on
their enactment had not the assistance of adequate legal training or
a law library or a competent bar and had no settled course of judicial
authority to refer to.
These conditions, and not the requirements of a developed European
or American community, supply in fact the test by which the form
and matter of the codes must be tried. No doubt in practice it has
not been feasible to check the accumulation of Indian case law by
regular periodical revision, as Macaulay proposed, by a permanent
Law Commission. There is further no reason for supposing that the
certainty at which he aimed has been attained to any extent which
affects the readiness of the Indian litigant to raise questions of law
and carry them to the appellate courts. The result is rather that the
HINDU LAW 389
discussion of such questions turns on the construction of the statute,
not, as it would under a common law system, on principle, and ac-
cordingly that the former and matters of procedure are relied on
more readily than the latter and the merits of the case. The experi-
ment of codification was moreover tried in India in favourable con-
ditions, because the hands of the legislation were not tied by any
previous coherent system of law. It is therefore difficult to draw any
general inference from its results. But, all deductions made, it may
fairly be claimed that, after the early mistakes had been corrected,
a body of law was evolved in the compact and serviceable form which
the circumstances of the country require.
One important division of the law administered in the presidency
towns as well as in the districts has not yet been referred to, the family
law applicable to Hindus, Muhammadans, Parsis and in Burma to
Buddhists. Its application was provided for in the High Courts by
their letters patent and eventually the Civil Courts Act which regulated
the jurisdiction of the other courts in each province, so far as it related
to succession, inheritance, marriage, caste or any religious usage or
institution, subject to any law or custom to the contrary. In the
Muhammadan, Parsi and Buddhist law since 1834 there has been
no marked development. But the Hindu family law requires fuller
treatment on account, not only of its intrinsic interest, but also of its
direct influence on the way in which property is enjoyed by the
majority of the population and on their social and economic progress.
The earliest sources of the law, the code of Manu and the writings
of Yajnavalkya, Narada and Brihaspati, have been described in an
earlier chapter.^ They were followed some five hundred years after
Narada, the latest, by the commentaries, which are however regarded
as having independent authority, the most important being the
Mitakshara (a.d. iooo-i 100), a commentary on Yajnavalkya and the
foundation of the law throughout India except in Bengal, where it is
on some points superseded by the Daya Bhaga (a.d. i 200-1 400), and
in Gujarat and other parts of Bombay, where on some points the
Viyavahara Mayukha [circa a.d. 1600) prevails. It was for the British
courts, when late in the eighteenth century they undertook to ad-
minister law resting on these remote foundations, to acquaint them-
selves with this literature, written in Sanskrit, and with the develop-
ment of legal conceptions during the intervening period. For the
former purpose the initiative of Warren Hastings and Sir William
Jones no doubt resulted in translations of Manu by the latter in 1794,
of the Mitakshara and the Daya Bhaga by Colebrooke, a Bengal
civilian, in 1810, and of the Mayukha by Borrodaile in 1827. There
were also two digests made under British influence, Halhed*s Gentoo
Code and Colebrooke's or Jagannadha's Digest. The former (1776) was
compiled at Calcutta by eleven pundits in Sanskrit and translated by
^ Vol. II, chap. xii.
390 LAW REFORM
Halhed, also a Bengal civilian, from a Persian translation at the
request of Hastings; the latter, a work of far greater value, translated
and edited by Colebrooke, a Sanskrit scholar and lawyer of established
reputation, contained extracts from original authorities. But these
digests went very little way towards supplying the necessary guidance
as to the progress of the law during the previous four centuries and the
manner in which it was actually being understood. Recourse was there-
fore had to the pundits, persons of the Brahmin caste, whose families had
handed down legal knowledge and tradition from generation to genera-
tion and who were attached to each court and were invariably con-
sulted, if doubt as to a particular case arose. Their opinions were at
first followed implicitly in spite of their natural tendency to discourage
departure from the authorities, in which they were practically the
only experts, even when such departure corresponded, as it must
sometimes have done, with established custom or altered social con-
ditions, and in spite of the fact that, to quote Sir William Jones, "even
if there were no suspicion of corruption on their part, the science they
professed was in such a state of confusion that no reliance could be
placed on their answers". Later the courts began to scrutinise their
opinions more closely and to notice discrepancies between them and
the authorities cited, and in western and northern India decisions
were based also on evidence from the heads of the caste concerned as
to its actual usage. In the south, however, where the Mitakshara and
the opinions based on it were accepted as conclusive, the result has
been aptly described as similar to that which would be reached, "if a
German were to administer English law from the resources of a
library furnished with Fleta, Glanville and Bracton and ending with
Lord Coke".^ No doubt the pundits, whose employment ended in
1864, had been a safeguard against the importation of European
notions into the law of the country. But it is possible that their
influence generally resulted in too uniform an application of the texts
and in disregard of the growth of particular family and local con-
ditions, by means of which social development would naturally
proceed.
The foundation of the Hindu law, as it was received and has been
administered by the British courts, may be stated in the words of an
accepted authority as being that,
whereas in England the ownership of property is simple, independent and un-
restricted, in India not only is joint ownership by the family the rule and pr^umed
to exist until the contrary is proved, but that is the description of ownership into
which all private property eventually falb.^
For, although each male member of the family is entitled at any time
to have his share per stirpes ascertained by means of a division of the
whole property and delivered to him, what he receives will at once
* Mayne, Hindu Law and Usage, p. 44. ■ Idenif p. 305.
HINDU LAW OF PROPERTY 391
become in his hands the nucleus of the property of a new family
composed of himself and his descendants and, although what the
individual may acquire without assistance from the family or its
resources remains at his sole disposal, such acquisitions will become
family property after they have once passed by an elaborate system
of inheritance or, as eventually became possible, by will. Unless and
until a division is claimed, the members of the family are, in Hindu
legal language, joint in food, worship and estate.
"The proceeds of individual property must", as Lord Westbury put it, **be
brought to the common chest or purse and then dealt with according to the modes
of enjoyment by the members of an individual family, the maintenance and educa-
tion of the members, their religious requirements including marriages and the
general advancement of the family's interests, and the only person competent so to
deal with them is the father or managing member, who can even alienate for family
purposes.'*
It follows on the same authority that "no individual member of the
family, whilst it remains individual, can predicate of the joint and
individual family property that he, that particular member, has a
certain definite share in it" and a fortiori that he cannot without a
division deal with any particular item of it as his own. Those were the
conditions on which property was held, as the courts understood them,
except in Bengal where under the Daya Bhaga in some respects the
father's sole ownership, in others the sons' right of disposition, was
recognised more clearly. This conception of the individual's ownership
as merely of an interest in property, the extent of which was liable to
alteration as the number of the shares increased or diminished by
birth, adoption or death, was no doubt suitable to a society simply
organised and mainly agricultural with land and cattle, the use of
which one member could superintend, for its chief possessions.
Alienations, claims to a division and acquisitions made independently
of the family or its funds, would be rare and are noticed shortly and
indistinctly in the texts. The absence of testamentary power over
property of the last-mentioned description and the obligation of a
member of the family to account to it for all professional earnings
which its expenditure, however small, on his education had in any
degree enabled him to make, would seldom cause hardship. Other
features imposing restrictions on individual initiative and develop-
ment, which can only be mentioned, were the liability of sons to the
extent of the family property for all debts of their father, whether
incurred or not for their benefit, so long as their purpose was not
illegal or immoral, and the limitation of the right of female heirs to
separate property to enjoyment for their lives, alienation by them
being allowed only in exceptional cases.
The law thus evolved with its restraints on individual enjoyment
of and control over property was evidently unfavourable to social
progress; but it remained unaltered in any material particular in
392 LAW REFORM
spite of the changes in conditions effected by improved communica-
tions and migration from rural tracts to towns and the colonies, the
spread of education and tlie increase in professional employment and
the growth of a more complex civilisation. It is useless to speculate
regarding the extent to which a more liberal recognition by the
Supreme and Sadr Courts of local and personal deviations from the
system, as sanctioned by custom, might have led to its relaxation. In
fact such deviations from the normal as were allowed affected msiinly
the law of marriage and succession to separate property. Two ex-
ceptions to this may, however, be referred to as indicating the attach-
ment of the Hindu temperament to joint ownership. One section of
tlie important Khoja community in Bombay as well as other Hindu
converts to Islam insist on retaining the Hindu joint family law in
combination with the Muhammadan law for other purposes ; and the
numerous followers of the Marumakattayam law in Travancore and
Malabar, who in the absence of any formal marriage relation trace
kinship only in the maternal line, adhere to the joint family system in
its most rigid and possibly more primitive form, no member having
the right to claim his share on a division at all except with the unani-
mous consent of the others. Subject to such exceptions and to some
relaxation in the case of trading families, the law as described was
administered by the Supreme and Sadr Courts and received from
them by the High Courts. It has since been substantially maintained
except in two respects, the gradual recognition of the right of the
individual to deal otherwise than by gift with his share of the family
property and of his right to dispose by will of property independently
acquired.
The legal history of these rights is of interest. The former was not
recognised by the earlier text-writers and the earliest English authori-
ties denied or were uncertain as to its existence ; but as to the advantages
of recognising it there could be no doubt. The first step taken by the
courts was to allow, not an ordinary sale, but the recovery by a
creditor of his debt by bringing to sale the debtor's interest, whatever
it might be, in the family property, the purchaser being left to obtain
delivery of the specific items representing that interest after they had
been ascertained in a division. This result was reached in Madras in
1855, in Bombay rather later, but in Bengal only in 1872. To hold
next that a member can himself sell what can be sold under a decree
against him would seem to be easy. But that step was taken in Madras
only in 1862 and in Bombay in 1873, whilst in Bengal, Oudh and the
Nor th-Wes tern Provinces the strict doctrine prohibiung alienations has
been maintained except in cases in which some special consideration,
for instance fraudulent representation by the alienor of his right to
alienate, is in question. This development of the law in Madras and
Bombay rested on a recognition of the consideration due in equity to
an alienee for values and therefore it has never even in those provinces
HINDU WILLS 393
been applied to alienations by gift. But it has lately been extended to
justify assignment to the alienee of the particular property alienated
in the division which must be made, if that can be done without
unfair prejudice to other members of the family. In such cases at least
a substantial departure from the original conception of joint family
ownership would seem to have been taken.
The course of development of the testamentary power was far
shorter. It was recognised in the texts, if at all, only in a rudimentary
form, and its use was from the first regarded by the British courts as
an innovation. Whether Hindu wills originated in the example of
English or Muhammadans or in the Brahminical influence exerted in
favour of a practice facilitating the endowment of religious objects,
is uncertain. But the first known will of a Hindu, the notorious
Omichund, was made in 1758. The testamentary power naturally
obtained recognition most easily where the largest measure of control
over property by the individual during his lifetime was admitted;
and accordingly wills received effect in Bengal from 1792, the law
being finally settled by a certificate given by the Sadr Court at the
request of the Supreme Court in 1831. Elsewhere, however, stricter
views regarding individual control over property delayed progress,
and there has never been any question of the right to bequeath
property which could not be transferred by gift — that is property of
the family. In Bombay the pundits held first that, as wills were not
mentioned in the Shastras, they ought not to be made ; and, although
they were recognised in Bombay city, where English influence was
strong, they were refused effect elsewhere in the province until after
1820, even in cases in which a gift would have been valid. In con-
sequence, however, of the increasing frequency with which they were
being made after that year, the High Court in i860 pronounced
generally in their favour. In Madras the privilege was established
less easily. At first, although there had been no actual decision, the
tendency of the Sadr Court had been to accept the views of such
authorities as Sir Thomas Strange and Mr Colebrooke and of the
pundits, that the validity of a will must be tried by the same tests as
that of a gift, and a statute had recognised the right of executors to
take charge of a testator's property. But in 1829 the legislature inter^
vened, repealing the previous law and declaring that wills were hitherto
unknown and were repugnant to the authorities prevailing in the
province and should have no force except so far as those authorities
allowed. This led the courts to treat wills as wholly inoperative, the
Sadr Court generally continuing to do so in spite of the confirmation
by the Privy Council in 1856 of a decision by one of its judges in their
favour; and it was only in 1862 that the newly created High Court
recognised the validity of Hindu wills in the south of India.
The law thus originated was unsatisfactory. The courts were con-
strained to hold that a will might be oral and that a written will was
394 LAW REFORM
valid without alteration ; and there was further no probate procedure
or recognised limit to the powers of executors. The Succession Act
already referred to did not apply to the wills of Hindus, Muhamma-
dans or Buddhists. That omission was repaired by two of the very few
statutes passed to alter or supplement the indigenous family laws of
the various religious communities. The Hindu Wills Act, 1870, and
the Probate Act, 1 881 , applied the essential provisions of the Succession
Act with appropriate amendments to the wills of Hindus and Buddhists
in Lower Bengal and the cities of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. The
latter provided for the application of those provisions to other tracts
in the discretion of the local government concerned ; but this power
has been used only to an insignificant extent.
Other instances of legislative interference with family law in spite
of its quasi-religious foundation are afforded by the Freedom of
Religion Act, 1850, by which so much of any law or usage as affects
the right to property or to an inheritance by reason of change of
religion or loss of caste was made unenforceable ; the Hindu Widow
Re-marriage Act, 1856, abrogating the law under which a widow
forfeited all rights over her deceased husband's estate on her re-
marriage; the Indian Majority Act, 1875, under which majority
occurs at the end of the eighteenth year instead of at the sixteenth
under Hindu or earlier under Muhammadan law; and the Age of
Consent Act, 1891, which in effect forbids consummation of marriage
before the wife has attained the age of twelve. It may be observed
that two recent enactments, the Anand Marriage Act, 1909, dealing
with the legality of a particular Sikh form of marriage and the
Muhammadan Wakf Validity Act, 191 3, dealing with the law
applicable to Muhammadan religious institutions, are expressed, not
as modifying, but as declaring the existing unwritten law. There have
been no important modifications by the legislature of that law other
than those referred to ; and only one unsuccessful attempt to alter it
by statute went far enough to call for mention. The Hindu Gains of
Learning Bill was intended to determine the existing obligation of a
member of a Hindu joint family, whose education has been assisted
in any degree by family funds, to account to the family for the addi-
tional earnings which that education enables him to make. The bill
was passed by the legislative council in Madras in 1900, but was
vetoed by the governor of the province. Sir Arthur Havelock, and has
not been brought forward again.
CHAPTER XXII
THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858-1918
X N 1858 the government of India was transferred from the Company
to the crown, and after the suppression of the Mutiny the reorganisa-
tion of the miUtary forces in India was the most urgent question before
the authorities. The viceroy, Lord Canning, at first favoured a system
advocated many years before by Sir Thomas Munro, of a large
European force enlisted for permanent service in India, but it was
finally decided that the European element should be provided by the
British Army, regiments and batteries being posted to India, as to
other places beyond the seas, for tours of foreign service.
The Company's European troops, now numbering over 15,000,
were transferred to the service of the crown, and the promulgation of
the decision raised protests and objections which were styled at the time
the White Mutiny. Both officers and men objected to the transfer of
their services without their wishes being consulted, and both were
insubordinate and disaffected. About 10,000 men claimed their dis-
charge, but a bounty offered to them, and a guarantee to the officers
of the pensions due to them under the Company's rules, allayed the
discontent, which need never have been aroused. One of the principal
grievances of the men was that many had made, and more, perhaps,
intended to make, India their home, and had married, or hoped to
marry, Indian or Eurasian wives whom they could not take to Europe.
The discontent of the officers is now less easy to understand, but it
was generally believed that though the "pagoda tree" could no
longer be shaken, the Company's service offered a better provision
than the royal service for a poor man, and the prospect of reduced
pay in a more expensive environment, and of less chance of extra
regimental employment, even when accompanied by the privilege
of serving for an Indian pension in their native climate, was not
welcomed by them. They had, however, the chance of remaining in
India with sepoy regiments, and of the officers of the two Bengal
Fusilier regiments considerably less than half volunteered to remain
with those regiments, now liable to tours of home service.^
The corps of Bengal, Madras and Bombay artillery and engineers
were amalgamated with the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers,
and the European infantry regiments, now, including those raised
during the Mutiny, nine in number, became regiments of the line,
numbered from loi to 109.
Of the regular native army of Bengal the cavalry and artillery had
* Innes, Bengal European Regiment, pp. 530-3.
396 THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858-1918
disappeared, and only eleven entire infantry regiments had remained
staunch. When the army was reconstituted nineteen irregular cavalry
regiments, some of which had been raised in the Mutiny, became the
Bengal cavalry, the eleven infantry regiments became the first eleven
of the line, next came two irregular regiments, then two Sikh regi-
ments, then two regiments formed fi-om the faithful remnants of
regiments which had mutinied, then a military police battalion, then
fourteen irregular regiments of the Panjab, but not of the frontier
force, and the number of the line regiments of the Bengal army was
brought up to forty-nine by seventeen irregular regiments raised
during or after the Mutiny. Numbered separately from the line were
four regiments of Gurkhas, forming part of the Bengal army, and a
fifth, a unit of the Panjab frontier force. The three presidency armies
were reorganised on what was inaccurately termed the irregular
system, which had been advocated by Sir Thomas Munro and Sir John
Malcolm. It differed from the regular system only in the number of
British officers attached to a regiment of cavalry or battalion of
infantry. Under the regular system they commanded troops and
companies ; under the irregular system they acted only as field and
regimental staff officers. In the Mutiny the irregular regiments had
proved at least equal to the regulars, for they had been commanded
by younger men, and native troop and company officers, entrusted
with responsibility, had risen to the occasion. Henceforth troops of
cavalry and companies of infantry were commanded by native
officers. In the cavalry British officers commanded squadrons, and
in the infantry "wings", or half-battalions. The regimental staff was
British, but the adjutant was assisted by a Jamadar-adjutant, in the
cavalry styled "Woordi-major", and British squadron and wing
officers assisted the squadron and wing commanders, and took their
places when they were absent on leave.
In order to render service with native troops more attractive the
appointments held by British officers in native regiments were treated
as staff appointments, and carried allowances, as well as pay of rank.
The officers on each of the three presidency establishments were
graded in a Staff Corps, recruited from the Company's and the queen's
services. There remained, in each presidency, two small bodies of
officers besides the Staff Corps, the first consisting of officers of the
pre-Mutiny armies and the second of officers who had received com-
missions since the outbreak of the Mutiny, who did not wish to join
the Staff Corps. These two bodies were known as the Local List and
the General List, the former, in Bengal, being styled the "lucky
Locals ", because, being promoted in the cadres of regiments which had
mutinied and murdered many of their officers, they were able to
retire on a full pension at a comparatively early age. Promotion in
the General List and in the Staff Corps was fixed on a time-scale.
After twelve years' service, reduced afterwards to eleven, and later to
PRESIDENCY ARMIES 397
nine, an officer became a captain; after twenty, reduced afterwards
to eighteen, a major; after twenty-six a lieutenant-colonel; and after
thirty-one a colonel; but officers in civil and political employ were
afterwards very properly debarred from rising above the rank of
lieutenant-colonel. The Company's military college at Addiscombe
was closed, and new appointments to the Staff Corps were made only
from British regiments. At a later date those examined for entrance
to Sandhurst competed for commissions in the Indian Army, and on
leaving the college were placed on an Unattached List, and, as had
been recommended by Munro, were attached for a year to British
regiments serving in India, before being posted to native regiments.
The establishment of each Staff Corps was calculated to provide
the number of officers required for service with native regiments, on
the staff and in army departments, and in civil and political employ,
and the establishments of presidency armies and local forces were
fixed as follows : Bengal army, nineteen cavalry and forty-nine infantry
regiments ; Madras army, four cavalry and forty infantry regiments ;
Bombay army, seven cavalry and thirty infantry regiments, and two
batteries of artillery; Panjab frontier force, six cavalry and twelve
infantry regiments, and five mountain batteries ; local irregular corps,
two cavalry and five infantry regiments ; Hyderabad contingent, four
cavalry and six infantry regiments, and four field batteries. When the
reductions were complete the forces in India amounted to 65,000
British and 140,000 native troops.
The uniform of the regular native armies, simple at first, had
gradually been assimilated in style and cut to that of British troops,
and had become most unsuitable to the Indian climate, but after the
Mutiny it was much modified. The shako and the Kilmarnock cap
were discarded in favour of the turban, and long, closely fitting
trousers in favour of wide breeches, or knickerbockers, and puttees,
approaching the Indian rather than the European style of dress.
After the second Afghan War, which broke out in 1878,^ and
severely taxed India's military resources and organisation, many
reforms were carried out, and in 1885, when the Panjdeh incident^
presaged the possibility of war with Russia, it became necessary to
prepare the army in India to meet a European enemy. The British
force in the country was increased by 10,600 men, bringing its
strength to 73,500, and substantial additions to the Bengal and
Bombay armies brought the numbers of the native troops up to
154,000.
Until the Mutiny military officers in civil or political employ had
been retained on the establishments of their regiments, unjustly
blocking the promotion of those who remained with the colours, and
an officer had been permitted to rejoin the regiment when it was
ordered on active service, or when the officer in question succeeded,
^ Cf. pp. 417 sqq.^ infra. 2 Qf pp 424-5, infra.
398 THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858-1918
by seniority, to the command. After the Mutiny, when British officers
were graded, according to length of service, in the three presidency
Staff Corps, an officer transferred to civil or political employ was no
longer borne on the strength of a regiment, but he retained the right
of reverting, when he wished, to military employ, and of promotion,
by seniority, to the rank of general officer, and at the age of fifty-five,
when he was considered too old for civil or political duties, his services
were replaced at the disposal of the commander-in-chief of the
presidency to which he belonged, and he was eligible for appointment
to an important command. This practice of allowing officers to return
to military duty after long periods of absence in civil or political
employ was most injurious to the efficiency of the service, owing to
their inevitable incompetence. This was less noticeable before the
introduction of arms of precision and rapid fire, but even in the days
of Dundas's Manoeuvres and the flint-lock musket it was already
apparent. Sir John Malcolm behaved gallantly at the battle of
Mahidpur, but his behaviour was that of a cornet of horse, not of a
general officer. ^ At a later period an officer commanding a regiment
of native infantry was thus satirically described :
For twenty-seven years has old Capsicum been on civil employ at that out-of-
the-way district Jehanumabad, and the blossoms of his early military career, now
rip>ened into fruit, are exemplified by a happy obliviousness of everything con-
nected with the military profession. The movements of a company might possibly
be compassed by his attainments, acquired through the instrumentality of
"dummies" on his dining-room table; but of battalion and brigade manoeuvres,
I suspect he knows about as much of them as the Grand Lama i^
The disaster of Maiwand at length convinced the authorities of the
danger of entrusting the command of troops, especially in the field,
to those who had in fact long ceased to be soldiers ; and later, officers,
after ten years' absence from military duty, were transferred to a
supernumerary list, and deprived of the right of returning, in any
capacity, to the army, though in order to entitle them to their pensions
they continue to receive promotion up to the rank of lieutenant-
colonel. At the age of fifty-five their services are still replaced at the
disposal of the commander-in-chief in India, but this is a mere
formality, and their retirement on a military pension is immediately
gazetted.
The pacification of Upper Burma after its annexation in 1886
occupied some years, and, in order to set free the large number of
regular troops detained in the country, battalions of military police
were raised to suppress the prevalent disorders.
The inferior quality of the material to which the Madras army was
restricted for recruiting purposes had been discovered even before the
end of the eighteenth century, and it had certainly not improved since
that time. In each war in which Madras troops had taken the field
* Prinsep, Transactions, p. 24. ^ Atkinson, Curry and Rice, "Our Coloner*.
MILITARY REFORMS 399
beside those of Bengal and Bombay, their inferiority had been
apparent, and the third Burmese War convinced the authorities that
the Madras infantry regiments, with very few exceptions, were almost
worthless as soldiers. After that war eight Madras regiments were
converted into Burma regiments, which, though they remained
nominally on the strength of the Madras establishment, were recruited
from the warlike races of Northern India, and were permanently
quartered in Burma. In 1895 the recruitment of Telingas was dis-
continued; between 1902 and 1904 two of the Madras regiments were
converted into battalions of Moplahs, one into a Gurkha corps, and
nine into battalions of Panjabis; and the cavalry regiments, which in
1 89 1 had been converted from four three-squadron into three four-
squadron regiments, were stiffened by a large infusion of personnel
from the Panjab.
In 1900 the native infantry throughout India was assimilated to the
British, and to that of continental armies, by the conversion of its
eight-company battalions into four-company battalions, which was
effected by combining the companies. For the purposes of internal
administration the eight companies remained, as before, under the
command of their native officers, but on parade and in the field the
double company was commanded by a British officer, and to each
battalion four double-company commanders, instead of two wing
commanders, were allowed, and each double-company commander
was assisted by a British double-company officer.
The independent development of the presidency armies has already
been mentioned. Its results were strange, and the presidency senti-
ment, a peculiar form of local patriotism, was very strong, not only
in the Indian ranks, but among British officers also, and did not die
until the present century, if, indeed, it is quite dead yet. Three armies,
each with its own commander-in-chief, subject to its own local govern-
ment, and governed by its own code of regulations, but all commanded
by British officers, grew up in the same British possession as strangers
and objects of curiosity, each to the others. The " Qui'hV\ the " Mull",
and the "Duck",^ as the British officers of the three presidencies were
termed, might almost have been regarded as men of different nations.
It is told of a gallant veteran of the old Bengal Artillery, who was full of
"Presidential" prejudices, that, on hearing the Bombay Army commended by
a brother officer, he broke out in just wrath: *'The Bombay Army! Don't talk
to me of the Bombay Army! They call a chilamchi a gindi — the beasts !"2
Many other stories of this nature illustrate a sentiment which long
prevailed, but is now, probably, almost obsolete.
In 1891 the StaffCorpsofthe three presidencies were amalgamated,
and became the Indian Staff Corps, and in 1893 the offices of com-
mander-in-chief in Madras and Bombay were abolished, and the
^ Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson (2nd ed.), s.vv. 2 Jdem, p. 196.
400 THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858-1918
control of the two armies was withdrawn from the local governments.
The pretence that service with a native regiment was service on the
staff, no longer necessary as a bait for candidates, could not now be
maintained, and in 1903 the Indian Staff Corps was renamed the
Indian Army.^
Under the presidency system the Madras army, for reasons already
given, had been gradually reduced ; the Bombay army had remained
stationary; but the Bengal army had so grown, with the expansion
of the territory which it garrisoned, as to become a force too unwieldy
for one command. In 1895, therefore, the three old presidency armies
were converted into four Army Commands, the Bengal army being
divided into the Panjab and Bengal Commands, and the other two
armies forming the Madras and Bombay Commands. Each Command
was placed under a lieutenant-general, to whom was delegated much
of the authority exercised until then by army headquarters. In 1904
almost tlie last vestiges of the old presidency system were swept away
by the renumbering of the regiments, which were incorporated in one
list, and numbered consecutively, the Bengal regiments coming first,
the Madras next, and the Bombay last. Some attempt was made to
retain an indication of the old numbering. Thus, the ist Madras
Lancers became the 21st Lancers, the ist Madras Infantry (Pioneers)
the 6 1 St Pioneers, and the ist Bombay Infantry (Grenadiers) the
loist Grenadiers, the gaps in the consecutive numbering being filled,
as far as possible, by the incorporation in the regular army of irregular
and local corps. In 1903, for example, a new arrangement made with
the Nizam regarding the province of Berar, which had been assigned
to the Government of India in 1853 for the maintenance of the
Hyderabad contingent, made it possible to incorporate that force in
the regular army, and its regiments helped to fill gaps in the numbering
of the regiments of the presidency armies.
In 1907 the four Army Commands were changed into Army Corps
Commands, each corps containing two or more divisions. The Northern
Command comprised the ist (Peshawar), 2nd (Rawulpindi) and
3rd (Lahore) Divisions; the Western Command the 4th (Quetta),
5th (Mhow) and 6th (Poona) Divisions; and the Eastern Command
the yth (Meerut) and 8th (Lucknow) Divisions. Two divisions, the
9th (Secunderabad) Division and the Burma Di\dsion, remained
direcdy under the commander-in-chief
In the second Afghan War the Panjab native states placed at the
disposal of the government contingents of troops which did good
service on the frontier, and in 1885, when war with Russia seemed
almost inevitable, the ruling princes, with that loyalty to the crown
which they have seldom failed to display on critical occasions, offered
their resources to the government. The offer was accepted, and in 1889
^ Proclamation by Lord Curzon, at the Coronation Durbar of King Edward VII, in
1903-
SERVICES, 1914-1918 401
the contribution of military force to be made by each state was deter-
mined, and constituted the force known as the Imperial Service
Troops. These, in times of peace, are under the control of the princes
who furnish them, and are commanded by Indian officers appointed
by them, but they are trained and disciplined under the supervision
of British inspecting officers appointed by, and responsible to, the
Government of India.
The last war subjected the resources of India, no less than those of
all parts of the empire, to a severe strain. The narrow limits of a single
chapter preclude anything of the nature of a complete account of
India's contribution of men, material, and money to the war, or a
record of the services rendered by Indian troops of all classes, but in
1 914 an Indian army corps was dispatched to France, and there,
during a winter so inclement as to try severely men born and bred in
Northern Europe, endured not only the onslaughts of the German
army, but the hardships and the horrors of trench life. Indian troops
fought not only in Flanders, but in East Africa and Turkey, on the
Egyptian frontier, in Palestine, and in Mesopotamia, and kept the
peace in Southern Persia; and during the war the Government of India
recruited, on a voluntary basis, over 680,000 combatants and 400,000
non-combatants, and more than 1,215,000 officers and men were sent
overseas on service, the Indian casualties amounting to 101,000.^
The Imperial Service Troops, among whom that fine old soldier,
the late Maharaja Pratap Singh, was the most prominent figure, were
a valuable addition to the forces of the crown, and distinguished
themselves in many actions, but among the most interesting and satis-
factory conclusions reached by critics who studied the conduct of
various classes in the war was one which related to classes regarded
as respectable soldiers, but not in the first rank of fighting men. Of
Pathans, Gurkhas, Panjabi, Musalmans and Sikhs much was ex-
pected, nor did they disappoint their advocates, but the Jats and
Marathas displayed a fine fighting spirit.
Until the outbreak of this war Indian sepoy officers had held
the viceroy's commission, the highest ranks which they could reach
being those of risaldar major in cavalry and subadar major in
infantry regiments, but in 191 7 they were made eligible for the king's
commission in the rank of lieutenant, and in all ranks to which a
lieutenant may rise. An endeavour is now being made to entrust
the charge of whole battalions, by degrees, to Indian officers, who
are being appointed to them as lieutenants, and will in the ordinary
course of promotion hold all the commissioned ranks in them, but it
cannot yet be judged how the experiment will succeed.
In 1922 the Indian Army was radically reorganised. ^ The number
of cavalry regiments was reduced, by the amalgamation of existing
^ O'Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 41 7-23.
2 Gazette of India, Army Orders and official Army Lists.
c H 1 VI 26
402 THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858-1918
regiments, from thirty-nine to twenty-one; the number of mountain
batteries was fixed at nineteen, with an additional section for Ghitral ;
the engineers remained three distinct corps, the Bengal, Madras and
Bombay Sappers and Miners ; and the infantry was organised in four
regiments of pioneers, nineteen regiments of the line, and ten regi-
ments of Gurkha Rifles. Three of the pioneer regiments and the
regiments of the infantry of the line consist of service battalions varying
in number from two to five, and a depot battalion stationed per-
manently at the regimental centre, in the area from which the regi-
ment is recruited. The duty of the depot battalion, which is always
numbered as the tenth, to admit of the consecutive numbering of
additional service battalions to be raised and formed when necessary,
is to keep the service battalions supplied with trained soldiers. One
of the pioneer regiments, the Hazara Pioneers, and the ten regiments
of Gurkha Rifles are recruited beyond the limits of British India, and
cannot, therefore, be organised on a territorial basis. The establish-
mient of each of these regiments is two battalions.
The old commissariat and transport corps, or departments, have
been reorganised as the Indian Army Service Corps; a proportion of
the infantry is trained as mounted infantry and a proportion as
machine gunners. The medical and all other departments of the army
have been reorganised in accordance with the lessons learned in the
late war.
An Auxiliary Force, raised from Europeans and British subjects of
mixed descent, and enrolled for local service only, consists of units of
all arms, with a total strength of about 36,000, and the Territorial
Force, composed wholly of Indians, consists of eighteen provincial
battalions affiliated to regular regiments, four battalions of urban
infantry in process of formation, eleven University training corps, and
a medical branch, with a total strength of about 19,000. The pro-
vincial battalions are liable to general service in India, or, in case of
emergency, beyond the Indian frontier, and the urban battalions to
service mthin the province in which each is situated, but the University
training corps are subject to no liability.
Of the combatant ranks of the regular army the Panjab alone
supplies nearly half, and the Panjab, the North- West Frontier
Province, Kashmir and the United Provinces together over 64 per
cent., the independent state of Nepal 12 per cent., the Bombay
Presidency and Rajputana each under 4-J per cent., and the Madras
Presidency rather more than 2^ per cent. The great province of
Bengal, with a population of forty-eight millions, supplies not a single
soldier, nor does the neighbouring province of Assam, with a
population of eight millions. The contributions of other provinces,
with the exception of Burma, which contributes nearly 2 per cent.,
are negligible.^
1 Simon Report, i, map facing p. 96; O'Dwyer, op. cit. pp. 417-23.
CHAPTER XXIII
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
XHROUGHOUT the second half of the nineteenth and the early
years of the twentieth century Central Asia continued to provide the
chief problem of Indian external policy. In some respects the problem
had been simplified by the course of events since the first Afghan War.
The conquest of Sind and the Panjab had placed the Government of
India in direct contact with the region concerned. But this tendency
was more than offset by other changes. Developing communications
were intensifying the reactions of regional interests. European needs
took an ever-increasing share in determining Indian policy. In 1857
Canning could write of "a fear at the India House that government
are going to do as Hobhouse boasted he had done, and dictate from
London what the Government of India shall do in Afghanistan".^
The fear became a reality. Half a century later Morley wrote from
the India Office: "The plain truth is... that this country [Great
Britain] cannot have tv/o foreign policies ";2 and from the Foreign
Office Sir Charles Hardinge observed of the negotiations for the
entente with Russia : "Recently we have left the Government of India
entirely out of our account".^ In the old days, the Government of
India, as a member of it declared, "could, if we saw good, have
marched our army to Candahar or Herat, and trusted to the Court
[of Directors] approving".* Foreign policy had been a matter in
which the governor-general had enjoyed a greater liberty of conduct
than in any other branch of his administration. The exigencies of
political action, the needs of a swiftly developing situation, had per-
mitted him, in the days before the Red Sea cable was laid in 1870,
to confront the home authorides with accomplished facts, with a
formal declaration of war or annexation of territory, in which they
could not but acquiesce, however reluctantly. But in the new period
telegraph and cable invested distant incidents with a growing in-
fluence upon European polidcs and at the same time permitted
European cabinets to control action which in the past had depended
on the wide discretion of local governors. Even Curzon's vigour and
determination had been barely able to restore to the Government of
India the phantom of its old authority; and what he could not achieve
lesser men could not even attempt.
Nor was the growing predominance of European control the sole
^ Fitzmaurice, Life of Granville, i, 153. ^ Recollections y 11, 179.
* Gooch and Temperley, Origins of the War, iv, 294.
* Martineau, Life of Frerei i, 245.
26-2
404 CENTRAL ASIA, 1 858-191 8
difficulty with which the Government of India had to contend.
Unluckily external policy was the one aspect of Indian political affairs
which was capable of exciting interest in Great Britain. Nourished
on the myth of Anglo-Indian aggressiveness, accepting without question
the extravagance of Burke and the far less justifiable falsehoods of
Macaulay's essay on Warren Hastings, Radical opinion perceived
aggression behind every measure of Indian defence; in their eyes the
frontier tribes were a race of wronged and noble savages, and the
Afghans a nation rightly struggling to free itself from the meshes of
intrigue cast around it by a malevolent Indian Government.
At the outset, in 1858, the governor-general still retained much of
his former influence and discretion. The situation, however, was
obscure. In 1 844 the visit of the emperor Nicholas I to England had
resulted in an understanding formulated in a memorandum prepared
by Count Nesselrode. This document declared that Russia and Great
Britain would work together to preserve the internal peace of Persia,
and that the khanates of Central Asia — Bokhara, Khiva, and
Samarkand — should be left "as a neutral zone between the two em-
pires in order to preserve them from a dangerous contact".^ For ten
years this understanding had been observed. But the Crimean War
had ended it without establishing any substitute in Central Asia.
Indeed from that time onwards British policy was constantly but
unsuccessfully directed towards restoring the situation as it had stood
from 1844 to 1854.
Meanwhile, for ten years after the restoration of Dost Muhammad
as the ruler of Kabul, British relations with Afghanistan had been
undefined but sullen. ^ They were modified under the pressure of
Persian eagerness to expand eastwards and reconquer Herat and
Kandahar. The former city had been seized by the Persians in 1852
and only relinquished under threats of vigorous British action. In
1854 the place was again attacked. Herbert Edwardes, the com-
missioner at Peshawar, perceived in this a heaven-sent occasion to
re-establish a definite friendship with Dost Muhammad. The chief
commissioner of the Panjab, John Lawrence, thought little of the
proposal; but Dalhousie was convinced of its propriety, and with his
approval Edwardes spent some months coaxing the amir into making
overtures to the British Government.^ The result was a treaty signed
early in 1855, by which the Government of India bound itself not to
interfere with the amir's territories, while he in return agreed to be
"the friend of the friends and the enemy of the enemies of the
Honourable East India Company".^ In one respect the treaty fell
short of what Dost Muhammad had desired. He had sought to extract
* ]£tude diplomatique sur la guerre de Crim^e, i, 1 1 sgq.
' Memorials of Sir Herbert Edwardes, i, 236.
' Bosworth Smith, Life of Lord Lawrence, i, 450, 452 ; Memorials of Sir Herbert Edwardes,
II, 239, 447. * Aitchison, Treaties, xi, 340.
DOST MUHAMMAD 405
a promise never to send an envoy to Kabul. This was deliberately
refused. The Afghan negotiator was to be assured (the instructions
said)
that the Government of India has no intention of sending and no wish to send a
representative to the court of Cabul ; but it should be pointed out to him that this
government could not in prudence bind itself never to depute a representative to
the Ameer, for if Russia or other powers should be represented by envoys at Cabul,
the interests of the British government would plainly suffer injury if no envoy
were present on its behalf.^
In 1856 Herat was again seized by the Persians, who boasted to
their Russian friends that they would occupy Kandahar and establish
themselves on the borders of the Panjab.^ This led to war, not only
with the amir of Kabul but also with Great Britain. A force was
dispatched from Bombay,^ and the amir was assisted with money and
arms, the employment of the subsidy being placed under the in-
spection of British officers, who were to be withdrawn as soon as the
war was over.* The Persians speedily came to terms by a treaty signed
at Paris on 4 March, 1857. The most interesting point of this agree-
ment was the care taken by the Russian Government to secure the
exclusion of English consuls from the Caspian ports, on the ground
that their appointment could have none but a political object.^
For some years after this the Afghan question fell into a calm. Dost
Muhammad was busily consolidating his power. In 1 862 he attacked
Herat. Though the governor-general, Elgin, admitted that in this he
was not the aggressor, the Government of India signified its disap-
proval by recalling the vakil — the Muslim agent — who had been
maintained at Kabul since 1857.^ Ignoring this protest. Dost Muham-
mad persisted in his attack, took the place in 1863, and died shortly
after at the age of eighty. He had designated his son, Sher *Ali, as his
successor. But in Afghanistan as in Moghul India, theoretical rights
of succession counted for little in comparison with force. A prolonged
period of fratricidal war ensued, now one, now another of Dost
Muhammad's sixteen sons gaining the upper hand. In 1864 Afzal
Khan and Azim Khan rebelled; in 1865 Azim Khan and his nephew
Abd-ur-rahman rose; in 1866 Sher 'Ali was driven from Kabul and
in 1867 from Kandahar; in 1868 he suddenly recovered them.'' An
incident of one of the actions of this period well illustrates the proud
ferocity with which the struggle was conducted. Amin Khan, Sher
'Ali's full brother, was killed fighting against him. His dead body was
brought in triumph to Sher 'Ali. "Throw the body of this dog away",
he said, "and bid my son come and congratulate me on the victory."
1 Memorials of Sir Herbert Edwardes, i, 242.
2 Dispatch from Anitschkoff, 27 October (O.S.), 1856 {Legation Archives, vii, e).
^ Goldsmid, Life of Outram, 11, 1 30 sqq.
* Aitchison, op. cit. xi, 342.
' Gortchakoff to Lagofsky, 26 February (O.S.), 1857 {Legation Archives, loc. cit.).
" Walrond, Elgin* s Letters and Journals, pp. 417, 419.
' A detailed narrative will be found in Wylly, External Policy of India, pp. i sqq.
4o6 CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
His officers, not daring to tell him that his son also had fallen, brought
his body. "Who is this other dog?" the amir demanded. But when
the corpse had been laid at his feet and he knew it for his son's, he
rent his garments and cast dust upon his head.^
Throughout this period, under the influence of John Lawrence, the
Government of India pursued that policy of inactivity which some
have called "masterly ",2 although in truth it consisted merely in
waiting upon events. Upon the generation that had witnessed the
Indian Mutiny, Lawrence's vigour of character and singleness of
purpose produced a remarkable effect. His opinions were accepted
as oracles, and men forgot or ignored the fallibility of his judgment.
Even Lord Salisbury, during his first tenure of the India Office as
Lord Cranborne in 1866-7, *' whole-heartedly" approved Lawrence's
ideas of Afghan policy.^ Lawrence had always disliked the idea of
alliance with the ruler of Afghanistan.* Both before and after Dost
Muhammad's death he had done his utmost to prevent the govern-
ment from taking any part in Afghan politics, on the score that the
British could not make a true friend of the amir. But his views (as
Dalhousie observed with customary incisiveness) were based on the
fallacy that the Afghans were too foolish to recognise their own in-
terests.^ Accordingly as Sher 'Ali, and then Afzal Khan, and then
Azim Khan, and then Sher 'Ali once more, succeeded in establishing
themselves as successive rulers of Kabul, the Indian Government was
content with recognising each in turn. Thrice in 1866 Sher 'Ali asked
for English help. Afzal Khan did the same. Lawrence, then governor-
general, ignored the former's letters and bluntly told the latter that if
he could solidly establish his power he might hope to be received into
the English alliance.®
■ This policy was the belated result of the old dogma of non-inter-
vention which in India had produced little but undesired and un-
expected war. Nor had it here even the excuse which it had had in
regard to the Indian states. From the time of Wellesley onwards the
Indian states had been dominated by the power of the Company, and
in them rival claimants could not turn from the great power which
refused assistance to any other great and neighbouring power. But
the Afghan rivals could and did. They applied to Russia and to Persia
for help,' as might have been foreseen. The policy of inactivity was
brought at once to a hasty end, and Lawrence advised that foreign
assistance should at once be countered by a supply of money and arms
to the side not leaning on Persian or Russian support.^ When the
home government gave him a free hand in the matter,^ he did not
* Abd-ur-rahman, Autobiography, i, 63. ' Gf. Wylly, op. cit. p. 115.
' Lady Gwendolen Gecil, Life of Lord Salisbury, i, 206.
* Bosworth Smith, op. cit. i, 450. ' Memorials of Sir Herbert EdwardeSy i, 239.
• Wylly, op. cit. pp. 76, 45. ' Idem, pp. 103 sqq.
8 Dispatch, 3 September, 1867 (Pari. Papers, 1878-9, LVi, 392).
• Dispatch, 26 December, 1867 {idem, 398).
RUSSIAN EXPANSION 407
even wait for the contingency to arise, but at once subsidised Sher 'AH,
who with this help speedily made an end of the remaining resistance
to his authority.
But great harm had been done. Abd-ur-rahman, for instance, on
being driven out of Afghanistan by his uncle, Sher 'Ali, hesitated for
a moment whether to seek shelter with the Russians or the English;
but as he "had never seen the benefit of English friendship",^ he
chose the Russians. Sher 'Ali himself declared that "the English look
to nothing but their own interests and bide their time".^ The force
of these views was strengthened by the contemporary contrast between
English and Russian policy. To the south-east of the Russian provinces
lay four khanates — Khokand, Bokhara, Khiva and Samarkand —
with vague, undefined frontiers, separated from their northern neigh-
bour by considerable stretches of desert. At the time of the first
Afghan War, some Russian activity had developed in this area, but
the understanding of 1844 had brought it completely to an end. No
relations had been maintained with the khanates; and it is at least
highly probable that the sudden change which occurred in 1858 was
produced more by political motives than by the supposed necessity
of imposing order on barbarous neighbours. In that year a mission
of enquiry, accompanied by a large body of topographers, was
dispatched under Ignatieff, to collect information about military
conditions, roads, and means of transport. The khanates had fallen
away greatly from their old greatness. They still abounded in schools;
but the studies pursued in them were the mere repetition of past and
obsolete knowledge.^ They were poorer, less populous, more fanatical.
The people of Samarkand believed that no infidel enemy could survive
polluting with his feet ground so hallowed by the dust of the blessed.*
But the withering of their rivers had dried up their wealth, weakened
their governments, and exhausted their man-power.
In these circumstances their absorption by the Russian Empire was
as nearly a natural process as anything political can be. In govern-
ment, in social organisation, in religion Russia was essentially Oriental.
In power and functions the emperor at St Petersburg was a cousin of
the Oriental monarchs. Apart from him and the functionaries who
represented him there was only the active local life of the villages, and
the Orthodox Church was the one branch of Christianity which had
not been occidentalised. Russian predominance would involve no
violent change, and its establishment would be nothing more than a
new illustration of that everlasting ebb and flow of power which has
characterised the Eastern world. ^ This expansion began shortly after
the Crimean War. In 1 864 Russian authority touched the borders of
^ Abd-ur-rahman, op. cit. i, 1 1 1 .
^ Rawlinson, England and Russia, p. 303.
' Vambery, Central Asia, p. 235.
* Vambery, Western Culture in Eastern Lands, p. 48.
° Gf. Vambery, Central Asia, pp. 36-7, 231.
4o8 CENTRAL ASIA, 1 858-1 91 8
Khokand, Bokhara, and Khiva. In the next year Tashkent was
occupied. In 1867 the new province of Russian Turkestan was con-
stituted, with Kaufmann as its first governor-general. In the same
year Bokhara was reduced, after sending a desperate appeal for help
to the governor-general of India, John Lawrence,^ and became a
subsidiary ally of the emperor. In 1873 Khiva submitted, placing in
the hands of Russia the management of all its external relations. ^ The
administration established to manage these new possessions and
control these new dependencies was purely military, and all reports
went to the War Office at St Petersburg.^
The motives of this expansion were complex. There were in the first
place the difficulties perpetually arising with semi-civilised, mis-
governed neighbours, who would think nothing of pillaging a caravan
and reducing the merchants to slavery. All the evidence agrees that
the Turkoman tribes were false, greedy, envious, ferocious.* Russian
diplomatists were always ready with this explanation, hinting that
Russian expansion in Central Asia was in all respects similar to British
expansion in India — a parallel which liberal opinion in England was
ever ready to accept. Military organisation, too, made for expansion.
Military governors could not look for rewards and promotion by
a peaceful administration. In 1869 Kaufmann's appointment as
governor-general was defended by Prince Gortchakoff expressly on
the ground that he had already gained every honour that a Russian
general could hope for.^ But this was not all. There was another yet
more powerful reason for expansion. It was designed in the p>olitical
interests of Russia. "Great historical lessons", ran the instructions of
the new ambassador. Baron de Staal, appointed to London in 1884,
have taught us that we cannot count on the friendship of England, and that she
can strike at us by means of continental alliances while we cannot reach her any-
where. No great nation can accept such a position. In order to escape from it the
emperor Alexander II, of everlasting memory, ordered our expansion in Central
Asia, leading us to occupy to-day in Turkestan and the Turkestan steppes a
military p)osition strong enough to keep England in check by the threat of inter-
vention in India.*
This position had been prepared, though not completed, while
Lawrence was still pursuing his policy of inaction, and demanding
that the Russian question should be solved by coming to an agreement
in Europe instead of by securing advanced positions in Asia. He
seems wholly to have ignored the point that unless England could
entrench herself so strongly in Central Asia as to convince Russia of
the futility of movements in that direction an agreement in Europe
could only be reached by subordinating English to Russian interests
on the continent.
* Wylly, op. cit. p. 92; of. Rawlinson, op. cit. p. 397.
* Treaty, 12 August, 1873 {Pari. Papers, 1874, lxxvi, 171).
' Boulger, Central Asian Questions, p. 14. * Cf. Curzon, Russia in Asia, p. 118.
' Clarendon to Buchanan, 3 September, 1869 {Pari. Papers, 1873, lxxv, 727).
* MeyendorfT, Correspondance diplomatique du Baron de Staal, i, 26.
DIPLOMATIC DISCUSSIONS 409
The Russian advance had led to diplomatic discussions, directed
on the British side towards re-establishing some such neutral zone
between the empires as had existed from the Afghan to the Crimean
wars. At this later period the most acute English students of the
Central Asian question urged that the Oxus should be taken as the
ultimate dividing line of the respective spheres of interest.^ But this
was a position which Russia could not now be induced to accept. She
claimed exclusive and complete control down to the northern bank
of that river and was only ready to discuss the establishment of a
neutral zone provided it began appreciably beyond that point. When
therefore Clarendon initiated discussions with Gortchakoff in 1869,
the emperor declared the idea of a neutral zone to be highly pleasing,
but the dispatch announcing this pointed to Afghanistan as an appro-
priate neutral zone.^ After consulting the India Office, Clarendon
replied "that Afghanistan would not fulfil those conditions of a
neutral territory that it was the object of the two governments to
establish, as the frontiers were ill-defined ".^ This feeble answer,
which gave away a considerable part of the British case, led to a
discussion of the alignment of the northern Afghan frontier and an
agreement early in 1873 by which Russia virtually gained her point
at the trifling cost of admitting Badakshan and Wakhan to form part
of the Afghan kingdom.* The Russian policy now was to advance up
to the effective borders of Afghanistan, and to get rid altogether of
uncontrolled or unoccupied territory in that area. This plan was
supported both by political motives and by sound administrative
principle. As Brunnow pointed out to Clarendon, neutrality as under-
stood in Europe could not be applied to Asia. The chiefs and peoples
of Central Asia cared nothing for the international law of Europe,
and neutralisation would merely become un brevet (Timpunite. Bokhara
and Khiva were mere robber-states, and could not hope for such
protection as in Europe covered states like Belgium and Switzerland.^
All that was really obtained was an admission that Russia regarded
Afghanistan as beyond her sphere of interest.
Meanwhile various endeavours had been made to remove the
unfavourable impressions produced upon Sher *Ali by Lawrence's
policy, which, even before Lawrence's retirement from the governor-
generalship in 1869, was already recognised by its author as inade-
quate. As has been seen, Lawrence at last decided to give Sher 'Ali
material help, and in 1868 offered to meet the amir and discuss with
him the political situation.^ This meeting never took place; but in
* Rawlinson, op. cit. p. 31 1.
* Gortchakoff to Brunnow, 7 March, 1869 {Pari. Papers, 1873, lxxv, 720).
' Clarendon to Rumbold, 17 April, 1869 {idem, 722).
* Gortchakoff to Brunnow, 31 January, 1873 {idem, 709); cf. Granville to Gladstone,
30 September, 1873 (Fitzmaurice, op. cit. 11, 413).
'Brunnow to Gortchakoff, 17 April, 1869 {Legation Archives, xxiii).
' Lawrence to Northcote, 10 October .1868 (Bosworth Smith, op. cit. 11, 401).
410 CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
March, 1869, Lawrence's successor, Lord Mayo, met the amir at
Ambala. Many English writers have chosen to represent this con-
ference as a great success,^ at which the savage chief was deeply
impressed by the disinterested generosity of the British Government.
But Sher 'Ali was seeking two advantages, for which he would have
conceded a good deal. He desired an alliance with the British to bind
them to support him against external attack, and he desired a promise
that the British would never acknowledge "any friend in the whole of
Afghanistan save the amir and his descendants ".^ Instead of any
such specific agreement, he could only extract a letter in which Mayo
said that the Government of India would "view with severe displeasure
any attempts on the part of your rivals to disturb your position", and
that it would "further endeavour. . .to strengthen the government of
Your Highness'*.^ These encouraging but non-committal statements
were too reminiscent of the government's attitude during the late wars
of succession to permit the amir to rely overmuch upon them.
A considerable impression was made upon him by Mayo's personal
charm, fine presence, and winning manners ; the tone of the governor-
general was more friendly; but the policy of the government had not
yet changed in any material respect.
Though disappointed in 1869, Sher 'Ali was constrained by circum-
stances to make one more trial of the English Government. The
absorption of the khanates on the Oxus was full of warning. Early
in 1873 he told the English vakil at Kabul, that the advance of the
Russian boundary gave him great anxiety that weighed upon him day
and night and that therefore he proposed to send one of his agents
to wait upon the governor-general and ascertain his views.* This
proposal led to the conference held at Simla in the following July.
The envoy asked that a written assurance might be given to him to the effect
that if Russia, or any state of Turkestan or elsewhere under Russian influence,
should commit an aggression on the amir's territories, or should otherwise annoy
the amir, the British government would consider such aggressor an enemy, and
that they could promise to afford to the amir promptly such assistance in money
and arms as might be required until the danger should be past or invasion repelled.
^Mso that if the amir should be unable to cope single-handed with the invader,
that the British government should promptly despatch a force to his assistance by
whatever route the amir might require the same.^
In view of this request and the general situation, the governor-general,
Lord Northbrook, proposed "assuring him that if he unreservedly
accepts and acts on our advice in all external relations, we will help
him with money, arms and troops if necessary to expel unprovoked
invasion. We to be the judge of the necessity".* This policy, if adopted,
^ E.g. Hunter, Life of Lord Mayo, i, 262.
* Mayo to Argyll, i July, 1869 {Pari. Papers, 1878-9, lvi, 466).
• Mayo to Sher *Ali, 31 March, 1869 {idem, 464).
* Agent, Kabul, to Commissioner, Peshawar, 14 April, 1873 {idem, 647).
' Memorandum of conversation, 19 and 20 July, 1873 {idem, 675).
• Telegram to the secretary of state, 24 July, 1873 {idem, 482).
ARGYLL'S MISMANAGEMENT 411
might have proved decisive in the development of the Central Asian
question. Its rejection was as decisive as its adoption might have been.
The Duke of Argyll at the India Office, and a majority of the Council
of India, were convinced adherents of the Lawrence policy. Mr Glad-
stone's first cabinet, then in office, combined a detestation of Russian
government with a curious tolerance of its expansion. It was, therefore,
resolved to reject Northbrook's proposal, on the ground that the amir
had no real cause for alarm, and to limit the governor-general's
assurances to a declaration that "we shall maintain our settled policy
in Afghanistan ".1 This decision was well-meant. But its authors
lacked imagination to perceive that it could not appear reassuring to
Sher 'Ali. To him it could mean nothing but a continuation of the
Lawrence policy of helping those who no longer needed assistance.
This criticism which Cranbrook passed in 1878 on his predecessor's
management of the situation seems amply justified. ^
The ill-effects produced by the abortive Simla conference were
emphasised by two other occurrences. The Government of India had
undertaken the thankless task of arbitrating on the boundary claims
of the Persians and Afghans in Seistan. This was a most ill-advised
measure. It may have been desirable that a long-standing subject of
dispute between the two states should be removed. But the more
equitable the decision, the more certain would it be to irritate both
the shah and the amir, for each would feel that his interests had been
neglected. At a moment when the influence of Russia was visibly
waxing, the Government of India would have done well to avoid
needless causes of friction between itself and its Western neighbour.
But the arbitration was held ; the decision went in some details against
Afghanistan; and both sides resented British impartiality as a sub-
stantial measure of injustice.^
Worse still, Sher 'Ali installed one of his sons, Abdullah Jan, as heir
apparent,* in supersession of an elder son, Yakub, who, according to
the Afghan custom, was rebelling against his father. When this
selection was communicated to the Government of India, the answer
was "designedly couched, as nearly as circumstances admit, in the
same language as that in which in 1858 the Punjab Government were
instructed to reply to the letter from Dost Mahomed Khan intimating
the selection of Shere Ali as heir apparent".^ Perhaps the government
was wise to desire not to commit itself to the support of a future
claimant who might prove to be incapable. But it blundered in
suggesting to Sher 'Ali that his favourite son could look for no greater
assistance than he himself had received before imprisonment, death
or exile had freed him from his own rivals.
1 Telegram to Northbrook, 26 July, 1 873 [Pari. Papers, 1 878-9, lvi, 482) . ^ Idem, 636.
' Gf. Sir F.J. Goldsmid, Eastern Persia, 2 vols. 1876; Pari. Papers, 1868-9, xlvi, 483-6.
The original reports are in F.O. 60-392, 393.
* Gf. Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. Abdur-rahman.
^ Dispatch to Argyll, 23 January, 1874 {Pari. Papers, 1868-9, xlvi, 491).
412 CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
Disappointed alike by the complaisance with which the British
Government seemed to regard the Russian advance,^ by the lack of
special favour shown by the Seistan decision, and by the refusal to
recognise Abdullah Jan as the future amir, Sher 'Ali naturally, if
imprudently, concluded that he must make his own terms with
Russia ;2 and circumstances conspired not only to assist him in doing
so but also to deprive him of Russian help as soon as he had committed
himself to Russia. The Russians met him more than half way.
Afghanistan might lie outside the sphere of Russian interests ; but it
had become a neighbour of the Russian Empire ; and intercourse
could easily be explained away as a mere matter of frontier courtesy.
So at first it was. In 1870 Kaufmann, the governor-general of
Russian Turkestan, informed Sher 'Ali that, although his nephew
Abd-ur-rahman had taken refuge in Tashkent, he would receive no
assistance to wage war against his uncle.^ This letter on its receipt
was forwarded by Sher 'Ali to the Government of India, which in
answer cited "the repeated assurances we have received from the
Russian Government" and suggested that Kaufmann's letters "will
doubtless be, when rightly viewed, a source of satisfaction and an
additional ground of confidence".* When Sher 'Ali announced the
nomination of Abdullah Jan, the Russian answered much more tact-
fully than the English governor-general, that "such nominations tend
to the comfort and tranquillity of the kingdom".^ From 1875 the
interchange of letters became more frequent. Such as transpired were
letters of compliment. But it was disquieting to watch the coming and
going of the bearers without any real knowledge of what was passing
behind the scenes.^
Moreover from 1874 these political events were being watched with
greater jealousy and suspicion. In that year Gladstone's cabinet was
succeeded by Disraeli's, Salisbury displaced Argyll at the India Office,
and before long Lytton succeeded Northbrook as governor-general.
The change involved a sharp swing of foreign policy both in Europe
and in Asia. Disraeli was convinced that the late cabinet had lowered
the influence of Great Britain in the world, especially by acquiescing
easily and without due question in the explanations of its Central Asia
policy offered by the Russian Foreign Office. He feared that unless
precautions were taken Great Britain would suddenly find herself in
a position of great political and strategic disadvantage. These views
were fully shared by Salisbury and Lytton. Nor was this surprising.
Of recent years Russian conduct had been most ambiguous. In
January, 1873, for instance, Schuvaloff, who had been sent on a
* Cf. Lady Betty Balfour, Lytton' s Indian Administration, p. lo.
* Cf. Yakub's statements to Roberts, Forty-one Tears in India, ii, 247.
» Kaufmann to Sher 'AH, 28 March, 1870 {Pari. Papers, 1881, xcviii, 335).
* Dispatch to Argyll, 24 June, 1870 {Pari. Papers, 1878, lxxx, 633).
^ Pari. Papers, 1881, xcviii, 343.
« Cf. telegram to Salisbury, 16 September, 1876 {Pari. Papers, 1878, lxxx, 533).
RUSSIAN ADVANCES 413
special mission to England, was assuring Granville that he might
safely assure parliament that the emperor had issued positive orders
against the occupation of Khiva. ^ Within a year Granville was com-
plaining that Khiva had become a Russian province under a most
thinly disguised protectorate. ^ His remonstrances^ produced a de-
claration in March, 1874, that no expeditions were contemplated
against the Tekke Turkomans, and that the emperor had peremptorily
forbidden such a measure.* On 10 May following General Lomakin
was appointed military governor of a new southern province and
promptly issued a circular to all the Turkoman tribes in that area
claiming supreme authority over them. The imperial government
asserted that the circular had been misunderstood.^ Just before
Lytton set out for India the Russian ambassador conveyed to him the
curious suggestion that Great Britain and Russia should unite to
disarm the Muslim states of Central Asia.® A little earlier Kaufmann
had been lamenting the hostility of Muslim opinion against Russian
administration.
Meanwhile Kaufmann*s correspondence with Sher 'Ali had in-
creased rapidly. Lytton called attention to the fact that whereas the
amir had at first sought the advice of the British Government con-
cerning the replies which should be sent to Kaufmann's letters, he
now had ceased to do so and was reported to be holding secret con-
ferences with the bearers.' The British Foreign Office therefore sought
from St Petersburg "a written disclaimer of any intention on their
part to negotiate treaties with Sher 'Ali without the consent of Her
Majesty's Government".^ St Petersburg declared with great em-
phasis that Kaufmann's letters were merely complimentary.^ But
Salisbury found it difficult to accept these assurances, and asked that
the correspondence might be wholly discontinued.^^ The Russian
Government tacitly refused this request. ^^ The Government of India
thus summed up the position :
The messages from General Kaufmann have not been despatched . . . only once
or twice a year. During the past year they have been incessant. The bearers of
them are regarded and treated by the amir as agents of the Russian government,
and on one pretext or another some person recognised by the Afghan government
as a Russian agent is now almost constantly at Kabul. We desire to submit to
your Lordship's consideration whether our own conduct would be viewed with
indifference by the cabinet of St Petersburg were the Government of India to
open similarly friendly relations with the Khans of Khiva and Bokhara.^^
^ Granville to Loftus, 8 January, 1873 {Pari. Papers, 1873, lxxv, 706).
2 Fitzmaurice, op. cit. n, 409, 41 1. ^ Pari. Papers, 1874, lxxvi, 176.
* Idem, 1878, Lxxx, 466.
^ Rawlinson, op. cit. p. 338; Pari. Papers, 1878, lxxx, 474, 475.
® Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. p. 33.
' Dispatch to Salisbury, 18 September, 1876 {Pari. Papers, 1878, lxxx, 537).
® Derby to Loftus, 2 October, 1876 {idem, 534).
* Loftus to Derby, 15 November, 1876 {idem, 543; cf. 549).
" Salisbury to Derby, 27 January, 1877 {idem, 553).
^^ De Giers to Loftus, 5 March, 1877 {idem, 559).
^^ Dispatch to Salisbury, 3 May, 1877 {idem, 565).
414 CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
Considerations of this kind, then, occasioned a reversal of the policy
hitherto followed by the British Government towards the amir. Till
1874 that poHcy had been one of general inaction, of subsidies, smooth
words, and an amiable acceptance of Russian assurances. The amir
had wanted a definite agreement. Not getting it, he had incUned
towards Russia, and listened, or at all events seemed to listen, to
Russian overtures, either with a serious purpose of seeking external
support from Tashkent or in the hope of alarming the Government of
India into conceding what he wanted, or perhaps in the hope of being
able to balance himself between the two great states — a policy de-
manding greater dexterity and more accurate information than the
amir could command. But the new cabinet at London with dis-
concerting abruptness resolved upon action. It took the view which
Lord Dufferin expressed so pointedly a few years later. " It would be
manifestly futile", he wrote, "to base the safety of the North- Western
Frontier of India upon any understanding, stipulation, convention
or treaty with the imperial government." For this view Dufferin
assigned a specific reason.
"I do not mean to imply", he continued, "that the emperor and his ministers
would wilfully violate their engagements; but the authority of the Russian execu-
tive is so slight, the control it exercises over its distant agents and military chiefs
is so unsteady, and its policy is so designedly tentative, while the forces which
stimulate the aggressive instincts of the nation are so constant, that little reliance
could be ultimately placed upon mere verbal guarantees." ^
Salisbury resolved to seek additional security in two directions —
by occupying a more commanding position on the Afghan firontier
itself, and by inducing the amir to accept British agents within his
territories. The first measure had been eagerly advocated and bitterly
opposed for a long time. Jacob, Rawlinson, Green and Frere had all
urged the need of occupying Quetta, in order to establish a post on
the further side of the hills, control the road to Kandahar, and threaten
the flank of any invader seeking to move through the Khyber or
Kurram Passes. Against these opinions was all the weight of
Lawrence's influence, still strong on the council of the governor-
general and the Council of India. But times had changed and
Lawrence's arguments had come to seem far less unanswerable than
before the advance of Russia. Despite the prolonged visits of elderly
gentlemen who "positively stamped about the room ",2 Salisbury
approved the occupation of Quetta under the treaty signed with the
Khan of Kalat at the close of 1876.^ These negotiations with Kalat
had two objects, the first was military, as indicated above. The second
was political. If the amir altogether refused to accept English agents,
the Kalat mission might be "the father of the Central Asian Mission
1 Dufferin to Salisbury, i6 March, 1880 (F.O. 65-1099).
* Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Salisbury^ 11, 159.
• Lady B. Balfour, op. ciL pp. 96 sgq.
THE PROPOSED MISSION 415
of the future. The agent would reside . . . chiefly at Quetta. . . . He
would have leisure for collecting information from Gandahar — Herat
— Gabul — and Balkh.. . .English rupees would try conclusions with
Russian roubles in the zenana and the divan ".^
In Salisbury's mind this political object was certainly the more
immediate matter. In Afghanistan the Government of India was
represented only by a Muslim agent who wrote (Salisbury thought)
"exactly what the amir tells him", and whose reports did not tally
with other reports received. ^ The consequent uncertainty was much
more than a formal disadvantage. Early in 1875 the secretary of state
wrote to the governor-general, Northbrook, "It has the effect of
placing upon our frontier a thick covert, behind which any amount of
hostile intrigue and conspiracy may be masked. I agree with you in
thinking that a Russian advance upon India is a chimaera. But I am
by no means sure that an attempt to throw the Afghans upon us is so
improbable".^ He therefore directed measures to obtain the estab-
lishment of a British agent at Herat, where the amir had already
expressed his readiness to receive one.'*
This decision was at once criticised on the ground that Sher 'Ali
had never given any formal promise to this effect.^ But Salisbury did
not assert that he had, and Northbrook himself had to admit that the
amir had " appeared to consent" on condition of the agreement which
had been refused him at Simla.^ However, he pleaded that the
measure was needless, the time inopportune, and the probable con-
sequence war.' Salisbury replied in a long and closely reasoned
dispatch. The undoubted conflict between the declared policy of the
Russian Government and the actual conduct of its frontier officials
made absolute the need of speedy and accurate information. "The
case is quite conceivable in which Her Majesty's Government may
be able, by early diplomatic action, to arrest proceedings on the
frontier which a few weeks, or even days later, will have passed beyond
the power even of the government of St Petersburg to control." His
orders were therefore to be carried into effect.^ Northbrook resigned
rather than obey, and Lytton was then appointed governor-general.
He carried with him instructions to send a mission to the amir by way
of Quetta and Kandahar to obtain Sher 'All's assent to the establish-
ment of a permanent mission. In return the amir might be conceded
the terms which he had asked for in 1873.^
After overcoming opposition within his council,^^ Lytton broached
* Salisbury to Lytton, 22 August, 1876 (Lady G. Cecil, op. cit. 11, 74).
2 Salisbury to Disraeli, 2 January, 1875 {ideni^ 11, 71).
' Salisbury to Northbrook, 19 February, 1875 {idem).
* Same to same, 22 January, 1875 {Pari. Papers, 1878-9, lvi, 502).
* Northbrook to Salisbury, 20 May, 1875 (Mallet, Northbrook, pp. loi sqq.).
^ Pari. Papers, 1878-9, lvi, 503. ' Mallet, op. cit. p. 105.
8 Dispatch to Government of India, 19 November, 1875 {Pari. Papers, 1878-9, lvi, 521).
* Dispatch to the governor-general, 28 February, 1876, and end. {idem, 530).
i« Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. pp. 64 sqq.
41 6 CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
the reception of the special temporary mission to the amir. This was
declined, but an Afghan envoy was sent to discuss matters with the
British authorities at Peshawar. The negotiations, protracted by re-
ferences to Kabul, lasted from October, 1876, till March, 1877, and
ended in complete failure.^ It has been usual to lay the blame for this
upon the policy of Salisbury, and no doubt Salisbury's policy weis
foredoomed to failure. What Sher 'Ali would have conceded in 1873
he would not grant in 1876. But unless it is argued that Briush
influence in Afghanistan was worthless, greater blame attaches to
Argyll for throwing away the golden opportunity of 1873 than to
Salisbury for seeking to retrieve his predecessor's error. European
affairs were moving to a crisis. A continuation of the policy of
quiescence would permit Russia to strengthen her growing influence
over the amir and thereby greatly to increase her power of hampering
British foreign policy. European conditions required that Sher 'Ali
(should make an open choice between British and Russian friendship,
I for, if he was not a friend to Great Britain, he was a dangerous
potential enemy. "A tool in the hands of Russia", Lytton said, " I will
never allow him to become. Such a tool it would be my duty to break
before it could be used."^
In Europe the Balkan troubles had given rise to a situaUon of
exceptional anxiety and strain. In 1875 a rebellion had broken out
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, leading in 1877 to the Russo-Turkish
War. These events intensified the antagonism of Anglo-Russian rela-
tions. For a year and more after the outbreak of the war a conflict
between the two great powers was by many thought inevitable. Both
sought every means within their reach to limit and control the action
of the other. On the one side the British occupied Quetta in 1877,
and on the other, as British hostility developed to the treaty of San
Stefano, and when Indian troops were dispatched to Malta, the
governor-general of Turkestan sought a specific alliance with the amir
of Afghanistan and initiated a military movement in the direction of
India. In the circumstances of the time nothing less could have been
expected. But the episode also indicated clearly what had been the
underlying motive of Russian policy in Central Asia for the previous
quarter of a century.
The Peshawar discussions had led nowhere. The main reason which
Sher 'Ali had alleged for refusing to receive an English mission had
been that acceptance would prevent his refusing to accept a Russian
mission. His argument proves how much ground had been lost by
1876, for it shows that he had come to regard the Russians and the
British as on an equal foodng. He had not done so in 1873. Nor even
now did his answer expose the whole situation that had developed.
For the moment the British proposal was dropped. But relations with
* Dispatch to Salisbury, lo May, 1877 (Pari. Papers^ 1878-9, lvi, 534).
' Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. p. 30.
STOLIETOFF'S MISSION 417
Kaufmann grew ever closer. In June, 1878, they culminated in a
letter written by the Russian governor-general to the amir, informing
him that the external relations of Afghanistan required "deep con-
sideration", and that he was sending a Russian officer — Stolietoflf—
" to inform you of all that is hidden in my mind ". ^ The envoy carried
with him a draft treaty offering terms very similar to those Lytton
had offered at Peshawar — recognition of the heir apparent and
assistance against any external enemy. ^ In case these proposals
should be declined, Kaufmann entered into tentative discussions with
Abd-ur-rahman, Sher 'Aii's fugitive nephew.^ At the same time three
columns of troops marched from Tashkent in the direction of the
Afghan frontiers. The Government of India was well served by its
agents. On 9 June it had heard of Stolietoff 's intended dispatch; on
the 24th it believed that he had set out.* He had in fact left Tashkent
on 1 3 June^ — the day on which the Berlin Congress met. His approach
tested the sincerity of Sher 'Ali's excuses to Lytton. Instead of meeting
with any firm refusal, the mission found at the frontier half-hearted,
probably mere ostensible orders not to enter the country. It ignored
them and arrived at Kabul on 22 July without a shadow of resistance.
On the 2ist Stolietoff is said to have received a dispatch from Kauf-
mann, informing him of the settlement reached at Berlin and warning
him not to make any positive promises to the amir.^ The marching
columns had of course been recalled.
The envoy's arrival and reception at Kabul raised in an acute form
the question of British relations with the amir. The case anticipated
by Dalhousie had arisen.' Lytton sought and obtained the home
government's approval for his insisting on Sher 'Ali's acceptance of
an English mission.^ The letter announcing that an envoy would be
sent arrived at Kabul on 1 7 August. Abdullah Jan, Sher 'Ali's heir
apparent, died the same day. This event offered a convenient pretext
for deferring an answer. But the letter was read in durbar; Stolietoff
urged the amir to delay matters and if necessary prevent the English
mission from reaching Kabul while he travelled to Tashkent to inform
Kaufmann, who would inform the emperor and thus compel Great
Britain to desist from her demands.^ On the 23rd Sher 'Ali wrote his
reply to Kaufmann, saying that Stolietoff had "reduced to writing
the verbal representations, the object of which was to strengthen the
friendly relations between the illustrious government of His Imperial
Majesty the Emperor and the God-granted government of Afghani-
stan", and would soon return with the writer's replies. ^^ On 21 Sep-
^ Kaufmann to Sher 'Ali, June, 1878 {Pari. Papers, i88i, xcviii, 350).
- Idem, 351 ; cf. Roberts, Forty-one Years in India, 11, 248.
^ Abd-ur-rahman, op. cit. i, 149. * Pari. Papers, 1878, lxxxi, 584, 591.
^ Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. p. 247. ^ Roberts, op. cit. 11, 1 10.
' Vide p, 405, supra. ^ Pari. Papers, 1878-9, lvi, 603.
'•* Roberts's report based on Yakub's information (Roberts, op. cit. 11, 469).
^^ Pari. Papers^ 1881, xcviii, 350.
CHI VI 27
4i8 CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
tember Neville Ghamberlcdn, the envoy whom Lytton had chosen, was
prevented by threats of violence from passing Ali Masjid.^ Sher 'Ali
had accepted Stolietoff 's advice and resolved to defy the Government
of India.
"The amir's policy", Lytton wrote, "was to make fools of us in the sight of all
Central Asia and all India without affording us any pretext for active resentment.
My fMDiicy was naturally to force the amir either to change his p)olicy or to reveal
it in such a manner as must make the public a partner with the government in the
duty of counteracting it."^
Lytton has generally been represented as taking an over-serious
view of the situation. But the problem was twofold. It was not
merely that of a possible invasion of India. It also included the results
of a widespread belief in its likelihood. Salisbury might scout the
possibility, advise the use of large-scale maps, and point to the essential
weakness of Russia,^ but an invasion of India was "a common topic
of conversation in every assemblage of chiefs between Tabriz and
Peshawur".* The fundamental weakness of past policy had been that
it had left Russia free to advance so that the day was visibly threatening
when the spheres of interest of the two empires would meet, not at a
convenient distance from, but actually on the Indian frontier. "It
may be very convenient", wrote Frere with great truth, "to say we
will be guided by circumstances ; but that is not the sort of policy
which wins friends and deters enemies."^
In the dispatch of the mission Lytton had overrun the wishes of
Beaconsfield and Salisbury. Both were extremely anxious to see the
Russian forces withdrawn from Turkish territory, and feared lest a
sudden flare-up of Afghan difficulties might endanger the execution
of the Treaty of Berlin. They would have preferred to see the Afghan
trouble smoothed over or at all events put off for a twelvemonth; but
Beaconsfield's language and views seem to have varied from day to
day,^ with the result that the instructions sent to Lytton by the India
Office were not so clear and specific as was expected. It had been
desired that the mission to the amir should proceed not by the Khyber
Pass, where it was expected and likely to be stopped, but by way of
the Bolan and Kandahar where opposition would have been more
difficult and unlikely.'' But the choice of routes seems to have been
left to Lytton, who chose the more provocative. On 25 and 30 October
stormy meetings of the cabinet took place. Salisbury and the Lord
Chancellor severely attacked Lytton's conduct and urged the ex-
pediency of curbing his future proceedings. Granbrook, the secretary
of state for India, strongly defended the governor-general. In the
interests of cabinet unity Beaconsfield proposed that Lytton should
1 Forrest, Life of Sir Neville Chamberlain, pp. 479^9^.
' Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. p. 285. ' Gf. Lady G. Gecil, op. cit. n, 128, 142.
* Frere, Letter to Durand, p. 44. ' Martineau, op. cit. i, 239.
• Monypenny and Buckle, Life of Disraeli, vi, 380 j^^.
' Lady G. Gecil, op. cit. n, 341.
THE SECOND AFGHAN WAR 419
be authorised to occupy the Kurram valley, not as an act of war
but as the taking of a "material guarantee" for the granting of the
English demands. But when it seemed likely that this would be
adopted, Granbrook refused to have anything to do with so half-
hearted a measure. At last Lytton's and Granbrook's views prevailed.^
On 2 November an ultimatum, expiring on the 20th, was dispatched
to Sher 'Ali. The amir had already applied to Kaufmann for assistance
in view of the threatening English attitude, which he rightly ascribed
to the arrival of the Russian mission.^ Kaufmann advised Sher 'Ali
to make peace if he could.^ In fact the Russian agents had fallen into
the pit which they had dug for others. Reckoning too hopefully on
the approach of an Anglo-Russian war, they had led Sher 'Ali into
relying on their support, at the moment when they found themselves
unable to accord it. Lytton and Granbrook were right in seizing this
precise moment to re-establish British ascendancy at Kabul, when
Sher 'Ali's hostility was manifest, when Russian intervention would
have involved tearing up the agreement reached so lately at Berlin,
and when Russian resources, financial and military, were depleted
by the recent war.
The campaign which began with the invasion of Afghan territory
on 20 November was skilfully conducted and speedily successful.*
Two columns advanced by the Kurram and the Khyber passes. On
22 December Sher 'Ali issued a far man in which, after recounting his
numerous triumphs over the invaders, he announced his retirement
into Russian territory.^ He died early in 1879,® and negotiations were
opened with his son Yakub leading to the Treaty of Gandammak,
signed 26 May, 1879,' before the British forces had entered Kabul.
By this agreement the new amir assigned the districts of Kurram,
Pishin and Sibi to the British Government; he agreed to conduct his
relations with foreign states in accordance with the advice of the
governor-general; and he agreed to accept a permanent British re-
presentative, who was to be stationed at Kabul. ^ Every object which
had been sought thus seemed to have been secured.
The doubtful point was whether Amir Yakub would succeed in
maintaining his position. Gavagnari, the political agent who had
conducted the negotiations, had not been much impressed by his
talent and character, reporting him as the best of his family, but fickle
of purpose, ignorant of business, and weak of mind. ^ The estimate
was not unjust. Roberts noted his shifty eye, retreating forehead, and
lack of vigour. 10 His weakness had already been displayed. Lytton
^ Monypenny and Buckle, op. cit. vi, 386; Lady G. Cecil, op. cit. 11, 342.
2 Pari. Papers, 1881, xcviii, 353. ^ i^gjji^ ^^^^
* The best account is probably to be found in Roberts, op. cit. chaps, xlv sqq.
* Pari. Papers, 1878-9, lvi, 702. * Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. p. 313.
' Pari. Papers, 1878-9, lvi, 691.
® Pari. Papers, 1878-9, lvi, 691 ; Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. pp. 326 sqq.
» Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. p. 322. i" Roberts, op. cit. 11, 202.
27-2
420 CENTRAL ASIA, 1 858-1 91 8
had strongly desired the establishment of a British mission, but had
contemplated its residence at Herat, not at Kabul. Yakub, however,
had himself proposed Kabul, ^ willing to run any risk provided he
could secure the support of the British army. The proposal was
accepted with some misgivings. Gavagnari, resolute and forceful,
was named resident — an admirable man in a crisis, but less suited for
a position of delicacy. ^ He reached Kabul on 24 July. He was well
received with an Afghan rendering of God save the Queen. ^ On
3 September he was murdered in the course of a real or pretended
mutiny of unpaid troops. Roberts's opinion, probably correct, was
that Yakub intended a demonstration which should show his inabiUty
to protect the mission and so obtain its withdrawal.* Events had
shown that Lytton had been unlucky in finding himself virtually
obliged to adopt Yakub as Slier 'All's successor, and unwise in
agreeing to the mission's being placed at Kabul and in selecting
Gavagnari as his agent there.
This misfortune led necessarily to a renewal of the campaign.
Roberts advanced by the Kurram Pass and occupied Kabul on
7 October. Yakub had joined him on the march, declaring that he
would rather be a grass-cutter with the English than attempt to rule
the Afghans.^ Roberts's swift movement disconcerted the tribesmen,
and though his cantonments were attacked, he had small difficulty
in holding his position through the following winter. Meanwhile the
political problem demanded solution. All agreed that Yakub should
not be restored. He was removed to India, pensioned, and resided at
Dehra Dun till his death in 1923. As no suitable candidate for the
amirat could be found, both Lytton and the home government inclined
to a policy of disintegration. The Foreign Office even began negotia-
tions with Teheran about the terms on which Persia might be suffered
to occupy Herat,^ while a representative of the old Sadozai house,
Wali Sher 'AH Khan, was recognised as sardar of Kandahar.^ Since
this arrangement, together with the occupation of the territory assigned
by Yakub, would secure the line of advance upon Herat whenever
necessary, and outflank any hostile advance from Kabul towards
India, it was thought that it did not greatly matter who held Kabul.^
These tentative arrangements, however, were quickly brought to an
end by an unexpected and very fortunate development. Ever since
Sher 'Ali's establishment in power in 1868, his nephew, Abd-ur-
rahman, had been living under Russian protection, mainly at
Samarkand. He was now a man of forty — short and stoutly built,
with bluff but pleasant manners and an easy smile, self-possessed,
* Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. p. 336.
2 Forrest, op. cit. p. 494. ' Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. pp. 342 sqq.
*■ Roberts, op. cit. 11, 254; cf. Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. pp. 375-6.
^ Roberts, op. cit. 11, 192 sqq.\ Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. p. 361.
« Lady G. Cecil, op. cit. 11, 375.
' Lady B. Ballbur, op. cit. pp. 376 sqq.
• Gf. idem, p. 408.
ABD-UR-RAHMAN 421
clear-minded. He looked the personification of watchful strength
moved by an inflexible will, and had indeed inherited his grandfather's,
Dost Muhammad's, vigour, judgment and ferocity.^ In 1880, after
many discussions with the Russian governor-general, Abd-ur-rahman
obtained leave to return to Afghanistan, and set out from Tashkent
with a small party of men. Next day, as he was on the march, he
received, as he thought, a sign from God. As sometimes happens in
the Central Asian deserts, ^ he thought he heard a great cavalcade, to
the number of 20,000, draw level with him and gradually pass on
ahead. "By this I reasoned that God had cleared my way for me."^
Full of hope he entered Balkh, praying Allah either to overthrow the
English or to turn their hearts.* As soon as Lytton heard of his
appearance, he had directed Lepel Griffin (the English political agent
at Kabul) to send him conciliatory messages, and, in spite of sus-
picions natural against one who had been long connected with
Russians, it was decided to enter into negotiations with him.^ But at
this stage matters were interrupted by the arrival (8 June, 1 880) of
a new governor-general, Lord Ripon.
In the previous spring a general election, in the course of which
Radical speakers had made great play with Lytton's conduct of the
Afghan question, had replaced Beaconsfield by Gladstone as prime
minister, Cranbrook by Hartington at the India Office, and Salisbury
by Granville at the Foreign Office. Northbrook, who took the
Admiralty in the new cabinet, was violently opposed to the policy to
which he had been sacrificed and loudly insisted on the instant need
of surrendering every post on the further side of the hills and returning
to the old frontier line. Accordingly the evacuation of Sibi and Pishin
was promised in the queen's speech in the opening session of 1881.®
But the zealots for retreat met with unexpected opposition from their
governor-general. Ripon had, indeed, gone out to India with a strong
bias against Lytton and all his works. He had on arrival ransacked
the records of the political department in the hope of finding schemes
that would have blasted for ever the reputations of Lytton and
Beaconsfield.'' But in fact he had taken over the negotiations with
Abd-ur-rahman at the point where Lytton had laid them down and
conducted them to the conclusion at which Lytton had already aimed.
Under his orders Griffin reached an understanding with Abd-ur-
rahman by which Pishin and Sibi were retained, and by which the new
amir placed the management of his foreign relations under the Govern-
ment of India, in return for which the Indian Government promised
to pay the amir an annual subsidy.^ Abd-ur-rahman had already
^ Gf. Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. p. 439; Sir Alfred Lyall, ap. Edinburgh Review, April, 1869;
Gray, At the Court of the Amir, p. 158.
2 Cf. Marco Polo, Travels (ed. Yule and Gordier), i, 197.
^ Abd-ur-rahman, op. cit. i, i^^sgq. * Idem, i, 190.
^ Idem, I, 192, 194; Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. pp. 412, 428 sqg.
^ Wolf, Life of Ripon, 11, 40, 48. ' Idem, 11, 12, 19.
* Memorandum of conversations, 31 July-i August, 1880 (F.O. 65-1104).
422 CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
given evidence of his real desire for English friendship. When in July,
1880, Ayub Khan, Sher 'Ali'sson, had attacked Burrows, commanding
the English force at Kandahar, inflicting on him a severe defeat at
Maiwand, the amir had promptly dispatched letters to all the chiefs
on the route by which Roberts was to march from Kabul to retrieve
the situation, directing them to afford the English all possible as-
sistance; and this explains at least in part the ease with which Roberts
effected his famous march from Kabul to Kandahar, leading to the
complete defeat of Ayub Khan's forces.^ When, therefore, Ripon was
called upon to give effect to the declared policy of the liberal cabinet,
he told Hartington bluntly that it would lead in ten years' time to
another Afghan war, and broadly hinted that he would rather resign
than overrule his council in order to carry out what he regarded as
a mistaken policy. ^ The cabinet accordingly permitted its declara-
tions to fall into a convenient if dishonest oblivion.
The settlement thus reached brought to a close a most dangerous
phase of the Central Asian question. Lytton may be blamed for his
provocative handling of the proposal to establish an Afghan mission
and for his selection at a later time of a too sanguine agent to conduct
British relations with the amir Yakub. But he had inherited a position
of extreme difficulty. Argyll's decision of 1873 had already convinced
Sher ' Ali that he had nothing to hope for from the English ; while he
fancied from their previous conduct that he had nothing to fear from
them either. Accordingly he had turned to Russia. Lytton had to
disabuse him of his error. Probably Lytton was right in thinking that
nothing short of war would do so. In any case war was made in-
evitable by the Russian action in the crisis of 1878. Stolietoff's
embassy imperatively demanded the submission or destruction of
Sher 'Ali. In view of the developments of the following ten years, the
policy adopted by Salisbury and Lytton was justified in its broad
outlines. Nor does the second Afghan War afford a parallel with the
first except in superficial aspects. Both, of course, illustrate the ease
with which Afghanistan may be occupied and the difficulty with
which it can be held. But the first ended with the mere restoration
of the ruler whom the British had dethroned, with no advantage
military or political or diplomatic. The second replaced a hostile by
a friendly amir; it brought to a decisive end the disastrous policy of
Lawrence and Argyll ; and it provided India, for the first time since
the collapse of the Moghul Empire, with a position from which the
north-west frontier could easily be defended.^
Up to this time the Russian frontier had not pressed too closely on
Afghanistan. But now Russia, taking advantage of the numerous
external difficulties of the Gladstone government, and fortified by a
^ Cf. Kabul Diary, week ending 8 August, 1880 (F.O. 65-1104).
2 Wolf, op, cit. II, 39.
' Cf. Davies, The North-West Frontier ^ pp. 10 sqq.
RUSSIA AND GLADSTONE 423
secret treaty with Germany, thought the time had come for abandoning
intentions which had been the subject in the past of repeated declara-
tions. The Merv oasis afforded the first example. It is likely that the
strategic importance of this region had been greatly exaggerated^ by
persons suffering from what the Duke of Argyll (with school-boy
humour) was pleased to call "mervousness".^ It was, however, in
disagreeable proximity to Herat, and on several occasions the British
Foreign Office had sought reassurances regarding its future. In 1882
these were repeated. De Giers assured the British ambassador in a
conversation, not once but repeatedly, that the mission of Russia was
one of peace and that she had no intention whatever of occupying
fresh territory.^ Within three months British agents were possessed
of documents showing that the Russians were seeking the submission
of the Merv chiefs,* and in fact, at the moment when the Russian
foreign minister was soothing the British ambassador, the Merv
chieftains were being urged and bribed to submit.^ Finally, early in
1884, when Mr Gladstone was embarrassed by the Mahdi in the
Sudan, the chiefs were beguiled and coerced into tendering allegiance
to the emperor, while the War Office at St Petersburg prepared a map
showing the Merv boundaries stretching southwards and touching
the Hari-rud near Herat.^ As Curzon said, "the flame of diplomatic
protest blazed fiercely forth in England; but, after a momentary
combustion, was as usual extinguished by a flood of excuses from the
inexhaustible reservoirs of the Neva".''
This event created such general uneasiness that the liberal govern-
ment could not leave matters where they stood. Conversations,
which had been begun in London as early as 1882,^ led to a reference
to St Petersburg.^ But although the imperial government regarded
Gladstone with a singular benevolence,^^ the operation of that senti-
ment was certainly limited by the need of taking the utmost advantage
of his tenure of office. While, therefore, it was willing enough to approve
the idea of formally defining the northern boundary of Afghanistan,
it also began to refer casually to Panjdeh and the need of establishing
peace in that area.^^ Granville eagerly took up the idea of a joint
delimitation; an Indian official, Sir Peter Lumsden, was appointed
to conduct the British mission, the amir was invited to provide
qualified officers, and Granville proposed that the British and Russian
missions should meet at Saraks on i October, 1884.^^ He thus
assumed that Russia really intended to co-operate. But for that the
Russian leaders did not yet deem the time to be ripe. They certainly
^ Curzon, op. cit. p. 120. * TTu Eastern Question, 11, 371.
' Pari. Papers, 1884, lxxxvii, 77.
* Idem, p. 95; cf. Baddeley, Russia in the Eighties, p. 129.
^ Curzon, op. cit. p. 1 1 1 .
« Pari. Papers, 1884, Lxxxvn, 183; 1884-5, lxxxvii, 38, 40, 41, 47, 49.
' Curzon, op. cit. p. 1 1 1. « Pari. Papers, 1884, lxxxvii, 66.
• Idem, p. 70. ^" Meyendorff, Correspondance de M. de Staal, i, 27.
" Pari. Papers, 1884-5, lxxxvii, 60, 63, 75. ^^ Idem, pp. 78, 96, iii.
424 CENTRAL ASIA, 1 858-191 8
aimed at securing positions which would place under their control
the entire body of nomad Turkoman tribes. Therefore, while they
named General Zelenoi head of the Russian boundary mission, they
also smote him with illness and insisted that on his recovery he must
have a prolonged period in which to study his instructions and gather
information. By that time climatic conditions would make surveying
impossible, so that nothing could be done till February, 1885, at
soonest.^ In December, as time was passing, the Russian ambassador
was ordered to seek British assent to the essential points of the Russian
proposals, which now claimed Panjdeh as independent of the amir.
At the same time, in order to cover the Russian movements, complaints
were made of aggressive Afghan concentrations.^ Granville claimed
that the definition of Afghan territory should be left to the commission.^
To this De Giers would not agree, and claimed districts which the
British declared to belong to Afghanistan.* By April the discussions
had reached a deadlock.^ Lumsden, who had gone with his mission
into north-western Afghanistan, had already reported repeated ag-
gressions on the part of the Russian military forces.* Then when the
telegraph line from Meshed was conveniently interrupted,' belated
news reached London on 9 April that the Russians on 30 March had
attacked a body of Afghan troops and driven them out of Panjdeh.^
Mr Gladstone's position was most difficult. Gordon's death at
Khartum had cast great odium upon his policy. The Irish question
was looming up ominous and unsettled. A new humiliation would
certainly terminate his tenure of office. So, though personally desiring
war no more than Disraeli had done in 1878, he was driven by circum-
stances into assuming a defiant attitude. He called up the reserv^es
and moved a vote of credit for special military preparations. De Giers
had contemplated carrying his point by bluff. He had even wired the
Russian ambassador for the information of the English cabinet that
the Afghan commandant at Panjdeh had lamented his inability to
comply with the Russian demands because the English officers forbade
him. But on the news of the vote of credit he withdrew his telegram.^
The ambassador, de Staal, who laboured for peace at this crisis, made
unofficial proposals which would, he hoped, assist the liberals to retain
office at the cost of something less than war.^^ Nor did the Russian
Government desire war — if it could attain its objects without. On the
English side it was proposed that even if Abd-ur-rahman had to give
up Panjdeh, he should at least retain Zulfikar. As the Russians set
a high value upon the first and none upon the second, ^^ and as the
English public was completely ignorant of Central Asian geography,
^ Pari. Papers, 1884-5, Lxxxvn, p. 121. - Idem, p. 149.
' Idem, p. 151. * Idem, pp. ly^ sqq. ^ Idem, p. 230.
• Idem, pp. 184, 198; cf. his dispatches, ap. F.O. 65-1235, 1236, 1237, 1238.
' Pari. Papers, 1884-5, lxxxvii, p. 231.
? Cf. Holdich, The Indian Borderland, pp. 127 sqq.
• Meyendorff, op. cit. i, 200, 201. *" Idem, i, 189^7^. ** Identy i, 191.
PANJDEH 425
the ministry was able to represent this as a graceful concession to
English wishes. As regards the attack upon Panjdeh, which in the
first flush of resentment and alarm Gladstone had characterised as
"an unprovoked aggression",^ the emperor refused emphatically to
admit the least enquiry into the conduct of the commander, General
Kumarof;2 but suggestions were put about that the question whether
Russia had violated her understanding with Great Britain might be
referred to the head of a friendly state.^ The arbitrator Granville had
in mind was the German emperor, since his character and experience
would give great weight to his decision.* Russia, perhaps for the same
reasons, insisted that the choice must fall on no one but the King of
Denmark.^ This too was conceded,^ and Gladstone was thus freed
to apply his supple tongue to soothing the passions which his political
position had for the moment compelled him to encourage and even
to simulate.' But all his dexterity could not completely hide the
nature of his settlement, even from his own countrymen. The Russian
Foreign Office became of course yet more exigent. When Granville
accepted the general principles laid down by Russia earlier in the year,
he found himself confronted by new and more stringent demands,
inspired by the Russian War Office.^ In June the Gladstone ministry
fell, and Lord Salisbury then took over the negotiations. After pro-
longed and difficult discussions regarding the area which was covered
by the name "Zulfikar", a protocol was at last signed on 10 Septem-
ber,^ and the projected arbitration, which had served Gladstone's turn
well enough, was allowed to lapse.^^
As a result of the discussions initiated in 1884 regarding the Afghan
boundaries and the appointment of a commission of delimitation,
Amir Abd-ur-rahman had been invited to confer with the new
governor-general. Lord Dufferin, at Rawulpindi; and he was actually
there when the Panjdeh crisis emerged. Even before the incident the
English ministry had anxiously sought to moderate his claims,^^ and
he then seemed to regard the Pass of Zulfikar, Gulran and Maruchak
as the only places of vital importance.^^ News of the Panjdeh affair
arrived on 8 April, and Dufferin at once promised him assistance in
arms, ammunition and possibly money, should war with Russia
follow.i^ He had received the news with a greater appearance of calm
than Dufferin had expected.^* But he was in fact far from indifferent
to what was going forward. The English mission had assured him
that the Russians never would dare to attack his forces — an idea that
must have been confirmed by the Russian treatment of Sher 'Ali in
1 Hansard, 3rd series, ccxcvi, 1 1 59 sqq,
2 De Giers to de Staal, 28 April, 1885 (Meyendorff, op. cit. i, 204).
3 Granville to de Staal, 24 April, 1885 (F.0. 65-1 241 ); Hansard, 3rd series, ccxcvii, 657.
^ Granville to Thornton, 9 May, 1885 (F.O, 65-1242).
^ Meyendorff, op. cit. i, 215. • Fitzmaurice, op. cit. 11, 442.
' Of. Meyendorff, op. cit. i, 211. ^ Idem, i, 216-19, 222-4. ^ Idem, i, 260.
I" Cf. idem, i, 237. ^^ Pari. Papers, 1884-5, lxxxvii, 239.
1^ Idem. ^3 Idem, lxxxvii, 242. ** Idem.
426 CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
1878. But the Russians had attacked, the EngUsh mission had hur-
riedly withdrawn. Great Britain had not declared war on Russia.
Though Abd-ur-rahman "was not a man to get excited, and therefore
took the matter calmly as a lesson for the future",^ it must have been
clear to him that neither empire was ever likely to fight on behalf of
Afghan interests, and that it would be wholly wrong to base his policy
on such expectations.
In the following year, 1886, the Afghan boundary from the Oxus
westwards to Zulfikar was at last formally laid down.^ This was
followed by six years of comparative quiet, until the revival of dis-
putes regarding the Pamirs. British officers were arrested in territory
which they averred was not Russian. Russian agents visited Ghitral;
and Russian detachments entered territory in the actual occupation
of the Afghans.^ In the middle of 1892 the Russian Foreign Office and
War Office agreed to seek to establish Russian dominion over the
whole of the Pamirs.* The appointment of a commission of delimita-
tion had already been proposed, and discussions were going forward.
These were therefore deliberately slackened off, mainly in consequence
of the demands of the Russian War Office,^ and no agreement was
reached till 1895, when on 11 March an agreement was signed by
which Afghanistan was to surrender territory north of the Panjah
while Bokhara surrendered that part of Darwaz lying south of the
Oxus.*
This settlement left no further room for disputes concerning the
Afghan boundaries, and the years that followed were marked by a
gradual relaxation of the Anglo-Russian tension, though this was
more perceptible in Europe than in Asia, and was accompanied by
spasms of vehement distrust at Tashkent and Calcutta. The far-
Eastern ambitions which Russia now displayed did not provoke in
English minds the intimate alarm which had been created by her
earlier activity in Central Asia, so that the clashes of policy revealed
in connection with the Treaty of Simonoseki, the Russo-Japanese
War, and the Anglo-Japanese alliance, hardly carried those possi-
bilities of war which had been implicit in the incident of Panjdeh.
Nevertheless, the representatives of both nations in Central Asia long
continued to believe the worst of the other's designs and vehemently
strove to counteract them.
Relations with Kashmir, with Tibet, and with Afghanistan therefore
still provided ready, but less serious, subjects of contention. Of
Kashmir what can usefully be said has been given elsewhere; but
Tibet afforded ground for an animated struggle between the home
and Indian governments, regarding the proper action to be taken
* Abd-ur-rahman, op. cit. i, 243. ' Holdich, The Indian Borderland, pp. \&^sqq.
' Meyendorff, op. cit. 11, 1 57 ; Abd-ur-rahman, op. cit. i, 285 ; Roberts, op. cit. 11, 446.
* Meyendorff, op. cit. 11, 176. ^ Idem^ 11, 209, 224.
* Pari. Papers, 1895, cix, 159; 1905, lvii, 457.
TIBET 427
upon the alleged Russian intrigue. At the close of the nineteenth
century the internal position of Tibet was unstable. The chief
authority of the state (a nominal dependency of China) was vested
in the Dalai Lama of Lhasa, but for a prolonged period no Dalai
Lama had reached years of maturity, each in turn perishing at a
convenient age which permitted the Council of Regency to continue
unbroken the exercise of its temporary powers. At last, however,
a Dalai Lama, under the artful guidance of a Russian subject, a Buriat
named Dorjieff, succeeded in growing up and assuming the tradi-
tional powers of his office. This revolution demanded external support
for its maintenance. In 1898, 1900 and 1901 Dorjieff was sent on
special missions to Russia, ostensibly to collect money from the
Buddhists of that empire, but probably with political designs as well;
and though the Russian foreign minister denied Dorjieff 's diplo-
matic character, he was received in audience by the emperor as an
envoy extraordinary. In the following year stories spread abroad
that a treaty had been signed by which China ceded to Russia her
rights over Tibet. ^ These reports were the more alarming because the
Government of India had no means of testing their accuracy. The
Tibetans were preventing all intercourse, both diplomatic and com-
mercial, with India. In 1890 and 1893 a convention and regulations
had been negotiated with the Chinese authorities ;2 but the Tibetans
had blocked the road leading to the place which had been selected
as a trading-post. Direct negotiations had been tried, but the governor-
general's letters had been returned unread.^ In 1902, therefore, the
Government of India, under Lord Curzon, was eager for definite
action in order to clear up the position. The home authorities seem
to have hung back until, on a report that a military expedition was
about to set out, the Russian ambassador produced a memorandum,
stating that such an expedition "would force the imperial government
to take measures to protect its interests in those regions".* Lord
Lansdowne, then at the Foreign Office, replied firmly to what he
called a gratuitous complaint,^ and it was agreed that a mission under
Colonel Younghusband should be sent into Tibetan territory, to
Khamba Jong, and if no envoys appeared there to Gyangtse, to oblige
the Tibetans to come to an agreement.* After a nine-months' pause
at Khamba Jong, the mission began to advance in March, 1904. In
a vain attempt to check it the Tibetans lost 600 men killed and
wounded.' Further attacks were made upon the mission at Gyangtse,
and so the advance was continued to Lhasa which was reached on
3 August.^ Finally an agreement was signed at Lhasa, by which marts
for the exchange of goods were to be opened, an indemnity, greatly
^ Pari. Papers, 1904, G. 1920, pp. 113, 116, 117, 140-1.
2 Idem, pp. 7, 22-3. ^ Idem, pp. 74, 99, 118, 125.
* Idem, p. 178. ^ Idem, p. 180.
* Idem, pp. 198, 209, 213. ' Idem, 1904, G. 2054, p. 11.
« Idem, 1905, G. 2370, pp. 3, 32, 49.
428 CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
reduced by the home government, to be paid, and the Chumbi
valley occupied for three years as a temporary pledge.^
These events in themselves had small importance. But they illus-
trate the ever-growing interaction of policy. As St John Brodrick
declared, "the course of affairs on the Indian frontiers cannot be
decided without reference to imperial exigencies elsewhere ".^ The
improvement of British relations with Russia was already under
consideration. It was difficult to deny the force of the Russian con-
tention that the establishment of British supremacy at Lhasa would
alter the position in Central Asia at the very moment when Russia
seemed disposed amicably to discuss the questions about which the
two empires had been quarrelling.^ Lansdowne therefore became
more conciliatory. On 2 June, 1904, he assured the Russian ambassa-
dor that, so long as no other European power intervened. Great
Britain would neither annex Tibet, nor establish a protectorate over
it, nor attempt to control its internal affairs.^ Hence the limitation
of the demands made upon Tibet when the settlement was reached.
With Afghanistan during the same period — 1 898-1 904 — Indian
policy pursued a similar course. In this direction the Russian
successes of 1884-5 ^^^ been followed by an active railway policy
which at last united the Trans-Caspian and the Orenburg-Tashkent
lines at Kuskh on the Afghan frontier. In 1 900 the Russians demanded
that the governor-general of Turkestan should be placed in direct
communication with the authorities of Kabul. In 1902 Count
Lamsdorff observed "that he had never quite understood why the
external relations of Afghanistan were in the exclusive charge of His
Majesty's Government". In 1903 the demand for direct communica-
tion was repeated, in language which the British Government
•' deeply resented " .^ Russian failures against Japan in Manchuria led
to a disposition noticed at the close of 1904 to recover the lost Russian
prestige by a campaign in Central Asia.*
In 1 90 1 the old amir, Abd-ur-rahman, had died and been suc-
ceeded by his elder son Habib-ullah. The relations of the old amir
with India had not latterly been very cordial, even though Durand
had settled the Indo- Afghan boundary.'' Abd-ur-rahman had been
specially anxious to be admitted to direct relations with the govern-
ment in London; but the proposal, which was put forward when
Nasr-ullah, his second son, visited England in 1895, was refused.^
The new amir, though milder and more amiable than his father, was
at first hardly more tractable. Disputes arose over the treaty with
Abd-ur-rahman, which the Government of India claimed (in ac-
cordance with Oriental use) had been personal to the late amir and
1 Pari. Papers, 1905, C. 2370, pp. 77 sqq. * Iderriy p. 46.
» Idem, 1904, G. 1920, pp. 298-9.
* Idem, 1905, C. 2370, p. 15; cf. Gooch and Temperley, op. cit. iv, 320.
' Gooch and Temperley, op. cit. iv, 512 sqq., 621, 186.
« Idem, p. 34. ' Vide p. 462, infra. * Abd-ur-r^man, op. cit. 11, 139.
ANGLO-RUSSIAN ENTENTE 429
therefore stood in need of revival, but which Habib-ullah claimed to
be still in full force. Not until 1904 would he agree to receive a
mission, and at last on 21 March, 1905, Sir Louis Dane signed a
treaty at Kabul renewing all the engagements between the Govern-
ment of India and his father. ^ At one time Gurzon had thought him
on the verge of throwing himself into the arms of Russia,^ and when,
in 1906, he visited Gurzon's successor. Lord Minto, in India, he was
reported on good authority to have written to the governor-general
of Turkestan, explaining that there would be no political discussions,
and adding, "if the British government. . .attempt to introduce their
influence into Afghanistan, the Afghans will resist and in that case
would look to the emperor of Russia for help".^
These Russian leanings seem to have been the result of circum-
stances rather than inclination. Habib-ullah himself was disposed
to social reform. He dressed, and made his wives dress, in European
fashion; his palace was filled with European furniture; he ate with
knife and fork instead of his God-given fingers. He was, therefore,
suspect amidst an orthodox, fanatical people. Nasr-ullah, his brother,
"a religious bigot of the narrowest type and violendy anti-British",
had a much stronger hold on Afghan affections.* Though Habib-ullah
was personally well disposed to the Government of India, he could not
afford to offend his northern neighbours, lest their intrigues should
strengthen the position of his brother.
In March, 1906, Morley raised the question of what guarantees
would be advisable should an agreement be framed with Russia.^
Minto and his advisers felt strongly that the whole proposal was full
of danger. Minto especially deprecated three points in the scheme as
originally communicated to him. One was that Russia and Great
Britain should suspend railway construction for ten years. He pointed
out that the Russian system already was complete and would not in
any case be extended except into Afghanistan in the event of war.^
Another was the concession of direct communicadon between Russia
and Afghanistan. "We are", he wrote, "to open a very dangerous
door to intrigue and to sacrifice the power which the amir has agreed
with us to exercise to check such intrigue. ""^ The third was that the
proposed agreement should not be signed without a previous arrange^
ment with Afghanistan.
The present situation has been agreed on between the amir and ourselves, and
. . . we are not entitled to cancel it without his consent. . . . To me it seems infinitely
more important to keep on friendly and controlling terms with him than to enter
into any bargain with Russia which might lessen our influence with him or alienate
him from us.*
^ Pari. Papers, 1905, lvii, 459. ^ Ronaldshay, Life ofCurzon, 11, 266, 267.
* End. in Minto to Morley, 16 January, 1907 (unpub.).
* Minto to Morley, 17 October, 1907, and 19 March, 1908 (unpub.); cf. Abdul Ghani,
Political Situation in Asia. ^ Morley, Recollections, n, 167.
^ Minto to Morley, 12 June, 1906 (Buchan, Lord Minto, p. 226).
' Idem. ^ Idem.
430 CENTRAL ASIA, 1 858-191 8
The first of these points seems to have been abandoned without
further discussion. The second occasioned long arguments at St Peters-
burg,^ but was at last abandoned. On the third, although opinion
at the Foreign Office favoured Minto's view, Morley insisted that, as
the agreement would involve no departure from the Afghan Treaty
of 1905, the terms should only be communicated to the amir as a
settied thing. 2
The convention with Russia was therefore signed on 31 August,
1907. As regarded Afghanistan Great Britain declared that she had
no intention of modifying the amir's political status, while Russia
recognised the country as beyond her sphere of influence and declared
she would conduct her relations with the amir through the British
Government, but Russian and Afghan frontier officials might settle
matters of a local and non-political character. As regarded Tibet both
parties agreed to conduct their political relations through China, not
to send agents to Lhzisa, and not to seek concessions in Tibetan
territory.^
The clauses concerning Afghanistan were to take effect when the
amir signified his assent. When it was sought, the coercive attitude
which Morley had assumed despite Minto's warnings proved its folly.
On being warned by the Foreign Office that Russia might ignore the
convention unless the amir acceded to it, Morley told Minto to put
the screw on him.* But it could not be done. The amir evidently felt
that his acceptance would imperil his position in Afghanistan, and
never could be brought to agree. It was humiliating "to admit that
although we decline to permit Russia to have any direct relations
with the amir, we are ourselves incapable of exercising any effective
influence over that potentate".^ But that was due to Morley's refusal
to allow Minto to begin his discussions at the proper time. Nor after
all did the amir's refusal matter much. So long as the entente between
his neighbours lasted, neither he nor his people could venture far.
This was shown clearly by the events of the war. Various German
agents at Kabul strove to provoke Habib-ullah into breaking with the
Government of India; but without success. The Russian revolution,
however, transformed the situation. The Anglo-Russian alliance
vanished. The orthodox party, enemies alike of Habib-ullah and of
Great Britain, no longer found themselves hemmed in on either side.
They gained in strength and daring. At last on 20 February, 191 9,
the amir was murdered in camp near Jalalabad,^ and the new amir,
Habib-ullah's son, Aman-ullah, soon found himself thrust into the
attack on India which led to the third Afghan War. By the treaty
^ Cf. Gooch and Temperley, op. cit. iv, 527, 549.
* Morley to Minto, 13 June, 1907 (unpub.).
3 Pari. Papers, 1907, cxxv, ij.78.
* Morley to Minto, 30 Apnl, 1 908 (unpub.) .
' Gooch and Temperley, op. cit. iv, 275.
* Cf. Moral and Material Progress Report ^ 1919, pp. 7 sqq.
AMAN-ULLAH 431
concluded in 1921, the Afghan kingdom resumed its freedom of
managing its external affairs.^ The logic of events has demanded this
brief excursion beyond the chronological limits of the volume. The
situation as it stood in 1921 closely resembled that which existed
before the second Afghan War. Bolshevik, like imperial, Russia once
more aimed at striking Great Britain through India. The weapons of
the new empire were keener and more subtle than those of the old —
propaganda in place of intrigue; but the purpose and the policy which
they served were little changed from those of the days of Alexander
and Nicholas; while Afghanistan itself, divided between the old world
and the new, was once more precariously balanced between India
and Turkestan.
* India in ig2i-2, pp. 3 1 9 sqq.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CONCiUEST Oi^ tlPPER BURMA
The Kingdom of Upper Burma, 1852-1885
King pagan's brother Mindon, fearing for his life, fled from
court in December, 1852, and after several weeks' petty fighting
deposed Pagan, keeping him in captivity for the rest of his life.
King Mindon (1853-78) was a complete contrast to his four mur-
derous and insane predecessors. Although so shocked at a map of the
world, which showed the size of Burma, that the bystanders had to
vow the map was wrong, he was erudite according to native stan-
dards ; he would gaze at English visitors near his throne through opera
glasses, feeling that these added to his impressiveness, yet he was of
truly royal presence; his economic measures were obscurantist, but
he possessed real business aptitude, and would have made a successful
broker; his piety was ostentatious, and his humanitarianism was
rendered possible by the speed with which his ministers carried out
executions before he could intervene, yet he sincerely loved his
fellow-men.
Fearing to be chronicled as the king who signed away territory,
Mindon would not accept Dalhousie's treaty,^ but he recalled his
troops and respected the new frontier. In 1 854 he sent envoys asking
Dalhousie to restore Pegu as it was not he, but his discredited pre-
decessor who had made war; Dalhousie said to Phayre, who inter-
preted, "Tell the envoys that so long as the sun shines, which they
see, those territories will never be restored.. . .We did not go to war
with the king but with the nation". Subsequently Mindon, thinking
that as his clergy had great influence with his government. Christian
clergy must have influence with their governments, sent his sons to the
Anglican Dr Marks's mission school at Mandalay and cultivated the
acquaintance of the French Catholic bishop Bigandet; when he found
that they would not urge Queen Victoria to restore Pegu, he thought
missionaries very ungrateful people, and dropped them. For years he
kept a reserve of officers to administer Pegu when the English should
restore it, either as a mark of appreciation or during some European
crisis. But he discountenanced the Pegu dacoits who for decades
claimed to hold his commission; and when the Pegu garrison was
depleted to supply the needs of the Indian Mutiny, he rejected his
court's advice to march, saying it was unworthy to strike a friend in
distress.
^ Gf. vol. V, p. 562, supra.
KING MINDON
433
As a new king was expected to change the capital, Mindon in 1857
abandoned Amarapura and built a new city at Mandalay near by,
but he abrogated the custom of burying human victims at the founda-
tion. Probably his most cherished achievement was the Fifth Buddhist
Council and its memorial, the presentation of a new spire to the
Shwedagon pagoda, Rangoon. The Fourth Council had been held in
Ceylon nineteen centuries previously; in 1871 Mindon summoned
2400 clergy to Mandalay, where, after they had recited the Buddhist
scriptures, a definitive text was engraved on marble; although only
Burmese clergy had been invited, Mindon styled himself "Convener
of the Fifth Council". The erection of a spire on a major pagoda was
the prerogative of a king in his own dominions, but the English agreed,
provided he did not come himself; coated with gold, studded with
jewels, and worth ^62,000, it was erected by his envoys in 1871 and
is still in place; the population of Rangoon was temporarily doubled,
yet crime ceased, and unprotected women were able to wear their
jewels in public throughout the festivities. Mindon's reign was a
happy period, for the Burmese simultaneously enjoyed English ad-
ministration and soothed their pride by the thought that their king
still sat on his throne in the Golden Palace at Mandalay. Beloved
though he was, travellers were struck by the contrast between the
down-trodden bearing, the sullen faces, the coarse clothes, of the
Burmese in his territory, and the laughter, the free bearing, the silken
clothes of the Burmese in English territory. From 1857 onwards, even
before the opening of the Suez Canal, an appreciable number of his
subjects, disobeying his veto, annually migrated to Pegu; the 1881
census shows 8-4 per cent, of the population of British Burma as born
in Upper Burma.
Abandoning the traditional seclusion of his predecessors, Mindon
employed Europeans, and sent missions to Europe; among the envoys
was the Kinwunmingyi. The failure of the mission to Queen Victoria
to secure direct negotiations was a severe disappointment, for to
Mindon, as to every other Burman, then as now, it was humiliating
to deal with a mere viceroy; however, he swallowed his chagrin, made
no difficulty over dealing with the viceroy, and never failed to receive
English officers courteously. The residency, re-established in 1862,
was raised from the 3rd to the 2nd class in 1875; its incumbents were
Dr Williams (1862-4), Captain (later Sir Edward) Sladen (1864-9),
Major MacMahon (1869-72), Captain Strover (1872-5), Colonel
Duncan ( 1 875-8) , Mr Shaw ( 1 878-9) , Colonel Horace Browne (1879),
Mr St Barbe (1879). An assistant political agent was maintained at
Bhamo: Captain Strover (1869-72), Captain Spearman (1872-3),
Captain Cooke (1873-7), Mr Cooper (1877-8), Mr St Barbe (1878-9).
Chambers of commerce in England credited Yunnan with an
enormous population and an unlimited capacity for purchasing
Manchester goods; the shortest route from England lay along the
c H I VI 28
434 THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
Irawadi River. Trade treaties made in 1862 and 1867 between the
king of Burma and the Government of India opened Upper Burma to
trade. English steamers ran regularly from Rangoon to Mandalay
after 1868 and reached Bhamo in 1869. English officers from Rangoon
visited Yunnan in 1868, 1875, 1877; those of 1875 turned back when
Margary of the Chinese consular service, who had travelled overland
from Shanghai and met them in Bhamo, was murdered by a Chinese
rabble. Mindon did everything possible to foster trade with Yunnan,
even removing a governor of Bhamo for obstructing English officers,
but the wild tribes north of Bhamo were subject to neither Burmese
nor Chinese rule; furthermore, from 1855 to 1873, the Yunnan market
ceased to exist in the anarchy of the Panthay rebellion. Trade in
Burma itself was hampered by Mindon, who not only enforced the
usual royal monopolies but was also the largest dealer in all kinds
of produce in his dominions. Even so, at the end of his reign,
whereas the annual value of English trade across land frontiers in
India was ;^5, 145,000, with Upper Burma and Yunnan it was
£3.225,000.
The raiders of Karenni carried off Burmans and Shans into slavery,
bartering them for cattle with the Siamese. Mindon's troops entered
Karenni; but when the English objected, he received the viceroy's
envoy. Sir Douglas Forsyth, in 1875 and concluded a treaty whereby
Karenni was recognised as independent. Hence, unlike the Shan
States, to which it is culturally inferior, Karenni is not part of British
India to-day.
When dictating the treaty of 1826 to a vanquished court, the
English had omitted to insist that envoys should neither remove their
shoes nor kneel in the presence. Successive residents, chief commis-
sioners, and Sir Douglas Forsyth, knelt unshod. In 1876 the viceroy
said that this might have been permissible in the days before Burmans
had gone abroad, but now they had visited European courts and seen
that at all there was only one method of receiving ambassadors, irre-
spective of a court's indigenous ceremonial; he himself received
Burmese envoys not only retaining their head-dress but also wearing
shoes and sitting on chairs, and in future the resident would neither
remove his shoes nor kneel. The Kinwunmingyi, who realised the
force of the argument, appears to have tried to state it to Mindon.
Although to yield meant losing face with his people, Mindon's
prestige was such that he could have carried them with him ; but he
exclaimed, "I did not fight to recover a province, but I will, sooner
than yield on etiquette". The Government of India was ill-requiting
a harmless old man, the one king of Burma who maintained correct
relations. Thereafter no resident was admitted to the palace, and
English influence declined.
One more reign like Mindon's should have given the thoughtful
minority at court time to grow, so that, like the kindred realm of Siam,
THIBAW'S ACCESSION 435
Burma might have been so prudently administered as to render
annexation inconceivable. By the irony of fate it was Mindon himself
who prevented his successor from being a person worthy of him, and
it was the very steps taken by the thoughtful minority to ensure reform
which caused obscurantism to triumph.
To keep the royal blood pure, a Burmese king's chief queen was his
own half-sister; yet her son seldom succeeded to the throne, as the
king nominated any prince, whether brother or son; many a king
avoided the decision, leaving things to settle themselves at his death.
Mindon had fifty-three recognised wives, forty-eight sons, sixty-two
daughters. He nominated his brother; in 1866 two of his sons tried
to assassinate him, and assassinated the brother. Thereupon Sladen,
the resident, urged him to select a capable son and proclaim him heir,
so that the kingdom might become accustomed to an accomplished
fact; Mindon refused, saying he had so many sons, that to nominate
any one of them would be equivalent to signing the boy's death
warrant. On his death-bed he appointed his three best sons to succeed
as joint kings, each with a third of the kingdom. Realising that this
meant civil war, and wishing to have a nonentity as king so that they
could introduce cabinet government, the ministers approved the plot
of the queen dowager, whose daughter Supayalat was married to
Thibaw, a junior son of Mindon's ; they suppressed the order, im-
prisoned the remaining princes and princesses, proclaimed Thibaw
king, and substituted for the immemorial oath of allegiance to the
king a new oath to the king acting with his ministers.
Although the king's orders had always been subject to the con-
currence of the Hluttaw (the council of the ministers), that could
refuse only at peril, and in the last resort the king alone could claim
obedience. The resident saw in the new oath, and in the character of
the ministers, hope for progress. But no paper oath could avail against
the sycophancy of the palace. Thibaw's mother, a junior queen, had
been expelled from the harem for adultery with a monk; he himself,
aged twenty, weak-minded, addicted to gin, was dominated by his
feline wife Supayalat; by a process of mutual attraction the couple
were soon surrounded by the vilest characters in the palace, who
superseded the better officers and took command of the troops.
Through fear of Supayalat, Thibaw further outraged convention by
not marrying the four major queens and numerous lesser queens
necessary to a Burmese king. The Kinwunmingyi usually acquiesced,
but only to retain office in hope of better days, and finally Thibaw,
fearing to be overthrown in favour of one of the imprisoned princes,
enforced the "Massacre of the Kinsmen": on 15-17 February, 1879,
nearly eighty princes and princesses of all ages were — since royal blood
was taboo — strangled or clubbed by intoxicated ruffians and flung,
dead or alive, into a trench the earth over which was trampled by
elephants.
28-2
436 THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
The Hluttaw was not implicated. The household staff arranged the
massacre; it had not been enforced for four reigns, and it now took
place in the age of the telegraph and newspaper ; but even the de-
fective chronicles of Burma contain seven instances since 1287, and
Thibaw's court seems to have been surprised at the horror aroused
in the outer world. It was the Kinwunmingyi himself who drafted
the curt reply to the resident's protest, that Burma was a sovereign
power, that her government was the sole judge of what the exigencies
of state required, and that the massacre was strictly in accordance
with precedent. A Burmese officer of humane character subsequently
said to an English commissioner:
We had no alternative. It has taken you English five years to crush dacoits
led by a few sham princes. How long would it have taken you had they been led
by seventy real princes? That was the risk we had to face, and we had none of
your resources. By taking those seventy lives we saved seventy thousand.
The chief commissioner recommended immediate withdrawal of
the resident, saying that this would secure the collapse of Thibaw's
unsteady throne. The Government of India refused, and covered their
indecision by saying that his presence would prevent further massacres
— as if whatever moral influence he possessed were not forfeited by his
continuing at such a court. Executions never ceased, and culminated
in the "Jail Massacre" of September, 1884; perhaps the Kin-
wunmingyi himself owed his immunity to the fact that he already
held the ancient title Thettawshe, "he to whom the king grants long
life", signifying that he alone, of all mortals, could not be executed
out of hand. The residency, a collection of bamboo huts surrounded
by a fence, was virtually blockaded, and no Burman dared be seen
entering. Yet the Government of India withdrew it in October, 1879,
only because reports that Thibaw contemplated exterminating it
coincided with the outcry at Cavagnari's murder in Kabul.
Four of Thibaw's brothers had fled the country — Myingun and
Myingundaing in 1866, after assassinating Mindon's uncle; Nyaun-
gyan and Nyaungok shortly before the "Massacre of the Kinsmen".
In 1868 Myingun escaped from internment at Rangoon, tried to raise
a rebellion in Upper Burma, was reinterned, and in 1882 escaped into
French territory. In 1880 Nyaungok escaped from internment at
Calcutta, raised a brief rebellion in Upper Burma, and was reinterned.
One or another of the four princes would have succeeded in ousting
Thibaw had not the French and English interned them ; Nyaungyan
in particular, Mindon's favourite son, whom he had nominated one
of his three joint successors, inherited his father's character and charm,
and was deservedly popular.
Opinion among non-officials in British Burma was unanimous that
Upper Burma must be annexed. In 1884 English and Chinese mer-
chants joined in sending money to Myingun at Pondichery, asking
THE FRANCO-BURMESE TREATY 437
him to invade Burma through Siam. Dr Marks inveighed from his
Rangoon pulpit and led the firms in public meetings which demanded
immediate annexation in the interests of humanity and trade ; they
claimed that these meetings represented every race, but in reality
Burmese British subjects, though they deplored Thibaw's misrule,
would not attend. The chief commissioner — Bernard, nephew to
Henry Lawrence who deprecated annexing the Panjab — advised that
annexation would infuriate the Burmese, alarm the princes of India,
and entail years of trouble; that we were not free from moral responsi-
bility for Thibaw's misrule, as Nyaungyan would long before have
ousted him but for our veto; that the Burmese would welcome
Nyaungyan even if imposed by us, and he would prove a friendly and
enlightened ruler. The Government of India, saying that internal
misgovernment did not justify intervention, and that statistics did not
support the contention that Thibaw's misrule diminished trade, would
neither act nor even protest against the later massacres.
What forced the English to act was that France, having won an
empire in Indo-Ghina, now tried to dominate Upper Burma by
peaceful penetration. For a decade the Burmese, anxious for their
independence, had vaguely striven for an alliance with some first-class
power; France refused to ratify the trade treaty of 1873 because the
Burmese insisted on inserting provisions for the import of arms and for
a full alliance. But in 1873 France had only Gochin Ghina, whereas
in 1884 she had Tonkin and was advancing towards Upper Burma.
When, therefore, in January, 1885, Ferry, the French foreign minister,
signed a public treaty for trade, he gave the Burmese envoys at Paris
a secret letter promising to permit the import of arms through
Tonkin when order was restored there ; it was not a cordial letter, for
the French, like the English, found the Burmese unsatisfactory to deal
with ; moreover the public treaty did not secure French nationals the
safeguards (e.g. consular jurisdiction) desired by Ferry, and French
officers in Tonkin disliked the distribution of arms. While the treaty
was pending, Lyons, the English ambassador in Paris, warned Ferry
that England had special interests in Upper Burma; in his last inter-
view before signing the treaty Ferry assured Lyons that he would never
permit the import of arms, so ardently desired by the Burmese; in the
interview announcing signature. Ferry told Lyons it was a harmless
trade treaty, and he avoided mentioning arms. In July, 1885, how-
ever, the secret letter was seen in the Mandalay palace by an underling
friendly to the chief commissioner, and the viceroy telegraphed it
verbatim to London.
France followed up the treaty by stationing a consul, Haas, at
Mandalay. A quiet scholarly man, ignorant of the language and
country, Haas suffered in health and disliked Mandalay. With him,
and with a Burmese envoy in Paris, French concessionaires negotiated
the establishment of a bank at Mandalay, the construction of a railway
438 THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
from Mandalay to the railhead in British Burma, and the manage-
ment of the royal monopolies, capital and interest to be secured on
the revenues of the kingdom. None of these grandiose schemes was
sound, and few advanced beyond the draft stage, but they would have
left the kingdom permanently in French control. Failing to collect
his revenue, Thibaw pawned the harem jewels, and, in defiance of
his father's memory, established state lotteries which, however, dis-
appointed expectation; unable to wait till the French bank materiaUsed,
he turned to the Bombay-Burma Trading Corporation, an English
firm which extracted timber over half his kingdom. They lent him
;(^ioo,ooo, and when they refused a further ^(^220,000 early in 1885,
they found themselves arraigned before the Hluttaw, sitting as a High
Court, for failing to pay their employees and defrauding the Burmese
crown of royalties in the Ningyan (Yamethin) forests. Sufficient
particulars survive for any magistrate to recognise the accusation as
typical of the false cases fiom the bazaar which come before him to-day.
On hearing that a French syndicate would take over the forests if the
corporation were evicted, the Hluttaw passed judgment ex parte, con-
demning the corporation to pay ^{^230,000.
Though alarmed, England could not act against Thibaw for
negotiating with a friendly power, but the corporation case compelled
action on unexceptionable grounds. And at this juncture France, having
suflfered reverses in Tonkin which delayed her westward advance,
withdrew from Upper Burma : her ambassador in London repudiated
Haas's acts, 6 October, 1885. The Burmese refusal to submit the
corporation case to the viceroy's arbitration reached Rangoon
13 October, and was reported to India the same day. The draft
ultimatum was approved in London and received back in Rangoon
on 19 October; it directed the Burmese to receive a permanent
resident, giving him free access to the king without humiliating
ceremonies, to submit the corporation case to the viceroy's arbitration,
to submit their foreign relations to English control, and to assist the
through trade with Yunnan. On 9 November Thibaw's rejection of
the ultimatum reached Rangoon, and he issued a proclamation com-
manding his army to drive the infidel English into the sea. On
28 November he was a prisoner in his palace, under a British infantry
guard.
Public opinion in England, shocked at Thibaw's atrocities, desired
annexation. The Government of India disliked it save as a last resort,
and the ultimatum meant what it said — that Upper Burma could
continue independent if its court would accept the slight restraint
which experience showed to be the irreducible minimum. The
Burmese having rejected this offer of a protectorate, annexation
followed, for the English were not in a position to appoint a successor
to Thibaw; his massacres had left so few claimants alive that there
was no field for selection ; the only claimant known to possess chai acter,
ANNEXATION 439
Nyaungyan, had died in June, 1 885 ; Myingun, believed to possess
character, was under French influence.
Dalhousie in 1852, Bernard in 1884, prophesied that, whereas
Arakan, Tenasserim, and Pegu, theoudying territories of the Burmese,
had been quickly conquered, the kingdom of Upper Burma, the
Burmese homeland, would offer prolonged resistance; in 1879 the
general commanding at Rangoon said he could take Mandalay with
500 men but would need 5000 to take Upper Burma. And so it
proved, for the loosely knit state bristled with village stockades and
evinced in defeat the tenacious vitality of the lower organisms.
Dacoity, always endemic, had become chronic under Thibaw; his
new ministers protected dacoits, shared their booty, and left district
governors unsupported ; villages submitted to the exactions of their
youthful braves in return for protection against the braves of other
villages ; in 1 884 Kachins captured Bhamo and carried fire and sword
half-way down to Mandalay. The troops who had been massed against
the English scarcely fired a shot, as Thibaw's proclamation was not
followed by definite orders to his men, and many, not knowing
Nyaungyan was dead, at first believed the English came to set him
on the throne ; but now, in the hour of the monarchy's dissolution,
they went home with their arms and joined the dacoits. They could
not combine, they plundered each other, and their fellow-country-
men, of whom the majority, sickened by their cruelty, ended by
welcoming the English, called them not patriots but dacoits. Although
they could seldom be brought to action, and the invaders' battle
deaths were only sixty-two in eight months, it took five years to dispose
of them; Sir George White, Sir George Wolseley, and the commander-
in-chief in India, Sir Frederick Roberts, were present; at one time
no fewer than 32,000 troops were employed.
And the area pacified in 1 885-90 was only the kingdom of Upper
Burma, i.e. barely half of Upper Burma. The greater half consisted of
tribal areas where Burmese rule had either, as in the Ghin hills, never
penetrated, or, as in the Shan States, been ineffective. The remotest
Shan state submitted in 1 890 when Mr (later Sir George) Scott took
forty sepoys, rode boldly into Kengtung, a mediaeval city with five
miles of battlemented wall, and received the surrender of the
wavering chief Fighting against the Ghins lasted till 1896.
Neither Sir Gharles Grosthwaite, the masterful chief commissioner
of the pacification, nor J. E. Bridges, his best officer in knowledge of
the people, had any illusions about the Burmese, yet both regretted
the annexation ; Grosthwaite said it extinguished the good as well as
the evil of the only surviving Buddhist state in India, and Bridges said,
"It was a pity. They would have learnt in time". Indirect adminis-
tration, giving the benefits of annexation without its defects, would
have yielded little revenue; moreover, native institutions, shaken
under Thibaw, were overthrown by the mere process of pacification,
440 THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
as half the territorial families were in the field against us. But the real
reason for imposing direct administration was that it was the fashion
of the age, and modern standards of efficiency were the only standards
intelligible to the men who entered Upper Burma. Few of them spoke
the language, and those who did, came with preconceptions gained
in Lower Burma. When overrunning Lower Burma, the Burmese had
devastated and depopulated the country; our administration led to
the return of refugees and to Indian immigration, but this hybrid
population grew up without traditions or hereditary institutions.
Hence Englishmen came to regard the Burmese as one dead level of
peasants, without class distinctions or hereditary institutions, their
government as unsystematised despotism, and Upper Burma as a
tabula rasa whereon to erect an administration of the approved Anglo-
Indian type.
These preconceptions are largely invalidated by research. Burmese
society was honeycombed with class distinctions, and the sumptuary
laws rendered it possible to tell a man's rank and occupation by a
glance at his dress. Even now, after the 1885 revolution, there are
village headmen who can trace their pedigrees for two and a half
centuries. The king did not proclaim himself, he was procl2dmed
by the will of the nobles. He took no coronation oath, yet he was
bound by immemorial custom and by religious awe. He could not
issue a single order till it had been registered by the Hluttaw, the
Council of the Ministers — the four "Great Burdens", the four "Arms
and Shoulders of the State" — for, as the French noted independently,
the races of Indo-Ghina abhor the rule of an individual. He had no
parliament: but thrice a year he had to face his lieges, as every office-
bearer, down to the humblest village headman, attended the three
great "Homage Days", when the king, having worshipped his
ancestors, was in turn worshipped first by his family and then by the
assembled court. He might be a haughty and murderous tyrant, but
if the lowliest cleric in the realm entered, he must leave his throne,
kneel, and, at the holy man's bidding, recall the death sentence he
had just uttered. There was in Upper Burma a complete social,
religious and political system of appreciable vitality, and two instances
(divorce and clerical discipline) will show what the annexation swept
away.
Burmese divorce is by mutual consent, but under native rule it
required the concurrence of the village headman, who imposed delays
and levied fees; under English rule these formed no part of his duties,
and already in 1 850 Phayre, noting the deplorable increase in divorce,
attributed it to the removal of these checks.
The king was head of the Buddhist Ghurch. His chaplain was a
primate who prevented schism, managed church lands, and adminis-
tered clerical discipline, through an ecclesiastical commission ap-
pointed and paid by the king. The primate prepared the annual clergy
THE BURMESE KINGDOM 441
list, giving particulars of age and ordination, district by district, and
any person who claimed to be a cleric and was not in the list was
punished. A district governor was precluded by benefit of clergy from
passing judgment on a criminous cleric, but he framed the trial record
and submitted it to the palace; the primate passed orders, unfrocking
the cleric and handing him over to secular justice. In January, 1887,
the primate and thirteen bishops met the commander-in-chief. Sir
Frederick Roberts, offering to preach submission to the English in
every village throughout the land, if their jurisdiction was confirmed.
The staff trained by the English in Lower Burma for two generations
included Burmese Buddhist extra assistant commissioners who could
have represented the chief commissioner on the primate's board. But
English administrators, being citizens of the modern secularist state,
did not even consider the primate's proposal; they merely expressed
polite benevolence, and the ecclesiastical commission lapsed. To-day
schism is rife, any charlatan can dress as a cleric and swindle the
faithful, and criminals often wear the robe and live in a monastery
to elude the police. As Sir Edward Sladen, one of the few Englishmen
who had seen native institutions as they really were, said, the English
non-possumus was not neutrality but interference in religion.
The Province of Burma, 1852-1918
Lower Burma, embracing the three commissionerships, Pegu,
Tenasserim, Arakan (which were mutually independent and corre-
spondedjPegu and Tenasserim with the Government of India, Arakan
with the government of Bengal), in 1862 was formed into a single
province, British Burma, with headquarters at Rangoon. Upper
Burma was, after annexation in 1885, combined with Lower and
styled the province of Burma, with headquarters at Rangoon. Its
head was a chief commissioner (1862-97); thereafter a lieutenant-
governor: General Sir Arthur Phayre (1862-7), General Fytche
(1867-71), Mr Ashley Eden (1871-5), Mr Rivers Thompson (1875-8),
Mr Charles Aitchison (1878-80), Mr Charles Bernard (1880-7),
Mr Charles Crosthwaite (1887-90), Sir Alexander Mackenzie
(1890-4), Sir Frederick Fryer (1895-1903), Sir Hugh Barnes (1903-5),
Sir Herbert White (1905-10), Sir Harvey Adamson (i 910-15), Sir
Harcourt Buder (191 5-1 7), Sir Reginald Craddock (1917-22); of
these fourteen, eleven were appointed from India without previous
experience of the province. Legislative power was reserved to the
Government of India until 1897, when the Burma Legislative Council
was constituted, a small body with an official majority and limited
powers.
Until 1886 the head of the province had one secretary and disposed
of all non-judicial work through district officers. He now has three
secretaries, a financial commissioner (1888) as chief revenue authority,
442 THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
a commissioner of settlements and land records (1900) cis head of the
setdement department created in 1 873, an excise commissioner ( 1 906),
a registrar of co-operative sociedes (1904), and a director of agricul-
ture ( 1 906) . The creation of the great centralised departments has
resulted in the execution of work which the district officer left undone;
the belief that his power has diminished will not bear examination.
By 1862, the year in which subdivisions were created and assistant
commissioners first stationed outside district headquarters, the district
officer was styled deputy-commissioner, and the distinction between
circle headman and township officer had crystallised; the circle head-
man remained a vernacular villager with only revenue powers, the
township officer became a salaried civil servant with both judicial and
revenue powers, and he began to learn English. Two-thirds of the
Burma Commission were Indian civilians, one-third soldiers and
uncovenanted.
The deputy-commissioner W2is in direct charge of the police until
1 86 1 when an inspector-general of police was created, with a super-
intendent of police in each district. Till 1887 the force was inefficient
and expensive, because the village community had been destroyed
and its headman deprived of police powers, and because early super-
intendents, being subalterns from the Indian Army, did not speak the
language and filled the ranks with Indians. In 1887 the village head-
man was given police powers, and the police were divided into two :
the civil police, consisting of Burmans, undertakes detection; the
military police, consisting of Indians, garrisons outposts and guards
treasuries. The creation of an excise department in 1902 relieved the
police of excise duties. English policy is to discourage intoxicants by
making them expensive, and incidentally to raise revenue. Native
policy was prohibitionist in theory, but drink and opium were not
uncommon in practice. Burmese opinion is that indulgence has
greatly increased and produces so large a revenue that the English
wish it to be so. In reality the excise department has prevented
an increase in the use of opium and has kept the increase of drink
within bounds. English officers have only legal powers, whereas
under native rule high officials were leaders of society, nor had the
influx of immigrants, many of whom belong to drinking races, taken
place.
The local regiments — Arakan Local Battalion, Pegu Light Infantry,
Pegu Sapper Battalion — were disbanded on the creation of the police
service in 1861. Save for the corps d' elite, a Burmese company of
Sappers and Miners raised in 1887, no further recruiting occurred till
the great war, when 8500 men were formed into rifle battalions,
mechanical transport, and labour corps, and, with the sappers, served
overseais. The rifle units were recruited chiefly fi^om the tribal areas;
few Burmans joined, and fewer stood the discipline. Yet in pre-British
times the race had a fighting record, and in the first generation of
JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION 443
English rule regimental officers thought well of the Burmese sepoys
they led against insurgents and frontier tribes — their marksmanship,
courage, initiative, endurance, and a cheerfulness which increased
with hardship. But since the post-Mutiny reorganisation the Indian
Army avoids small racial units speaking obscure languages.
In 1862 the chief commissioner, himself constituting a Chief Court,
had three commissioners, who were sessions and divisional judges,
trying murder cases and second civil appeals; twelve deputy-com-
missioners, who were district magistrates and district judges, trying
cases not requiring over seven years' imprisonment, major civil suits,
and first civil appeals ; and a hundred subordinate executive officers,
mostly natives, trying minor criminal and most civil original cases.
Recorders existed in Rangoon (i 864-1 900) and Moulmein (1864-72) ;
a recorder was an English barrister district and sessions judge subject
to the Calcutta High Court. A judicial commissioner, appointed
in 1872 with Chief Court powers (save over the recorder) , relieved the
chief commissioner of all judicial functions. In 1890 a judicial com-
missioner was appointed for Upper Burma. In 1900 the judicial
commissioner. Lower Burma, and recorder, Rangoon, were abolished
and a Chief Court for Lower Burma constituted. The first general
step towards separation of judiciary and executive occurred in 1905
in Lower Burma, where population and work are greatest : a separate
judicial service was created, commissioners ceased to exercise judicial
functions and deputy-commissioners and their executive assistants
tried only major criminal cases. In Upper Burma commissioners and
deputy-commissioners still try most criminal and some civil cases.
Although in some respects Western legal training unfits a man to
administer justice among backward Eastern peoples, and few of the
judiciary know sufficient English to master a voluminous legal litera-
ture, the tendency is for judicial administration to become increasingly
complex and for case-law to swamp the codes. The system has helped
to create a class of denationalised native lawyer who shows little skill
save in raising obstructions and procuring perjury. For long it was
usual to appoint as judges men who had failed as executive officers.
Sir Charles Bernard said there were no High Courts in the British
Empire where the atmosphere was so unreal; in successive annual
pronouncements he condemned frequent interference in appeal as
showing perfunctory appellate work, which encouraged frivolous
appeals and increased crime. In Upper Burma, a man could be
tortured to death on summary trial, until the day of the annexation ;
almost from the day after, he could not even be fined without a
prolonged trial and appeals, and Sir Charles Crosthwaite was dis-
mayed at the appointment of a judicial commissioner to Mandalay
while fighting was still in progress. The dacoit leader Nga Ya Nyun
pounded infants in rice mortars under their mothers' eyes, roasted
old women between the legs, and ate his prisoners alive; in 1890 he
444 THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
was sentenced to death at Myingyan on evidence which would have
satisfied a home judge and jury in twenty minutes, but the judicial
commissioner in appeal was with difficulty induced, after prolonged
quibbling, to imprison him. The belief that appellate interference was
less common in the old days is contrary to facts : confirmations rose
from 54 per cent, in 1864 to 68 per cent, in 191 8.
Public works officers had always existed in the garrison engineers
of important districts, but by 1862 there was a complete civil cadre
under a chief engineer ; relying partly on jail labour, they laid out
Rangoon; in 1864-83 they built the great delta embankments, and
after 1885 they extended the native irrigation system of Upper Burma.
The single railway line from Rangoon reached Prome in 1877,
Toungoo in 1885, Mandalay in 1889, Myitkyina in 1898, Lashio in
1902, Moulmein in 1907. But there is no railway communication
with India or Siam; there are still barely 2000 miles of metalled road,
less than in a London suburb, in a province twice the area of the
British Isles ; and anywhere, after a century of English rule, one can
ride for days — in the dry season, for in the rains one cannot ride a
fiirlong — without meeting a road or a bridge. The huge lead-silver
mines of the Northern Shan States are near a railway; the oil-fields
of Yenangyaung are on the Irawadi River; the wolfram mines of
Tavoy are near the sea; but elsewhere minerals lie untouched, and
agricultural development is hampered for lack of communications.
As each conquest (1826, 1852, 1885) was an overseas operation, the
cost of which was not recovered for a generation, the Government of
India had to recoup itself by seizing the surplus revenues of Burma,
which would have been ample to provide communications, although
population was scarce and labour cost thrice ordinary Indian rates.
It was on a reference from McClelland, superintendent of forests,
Pegu, that Dalhousie in 1855 enunciated the forest policy of India.
And it was in Pegu that Sir Dietrich Brandis, arriving in 1856, laid
the foundations of the Indian forest department, in the teeth of
European firms' opposition, and trained his great successor, Sir
William Schlich. The forests of Burma are among the finest in the
world ; thanks to state ownership they remain one of her principal
assets and provide much of her revenue; one-fourth of the Indian
forest service is concentrated in Burma.
In 1865 Phayre said that the true line of educational advance lay
not in Anglo-vernacular schools but in improving vernacular schools,
of which the Buddhist clergy had spread a network over the country
— save among the wild tribes, every village in Burma has its cleric,
and his monastery is the village school, so that for centuries, though
learning has been rare, most men and many women have been able
to read and even to write. In 1866 a director of public instruction wais
appointed to execute Phayre's scheme; but the director spoke little
Burmese, the clergy spoke no English ; the director had no staff, the
EDUCATION 445
clergy had no central authority; most were either apathetic, or dis-
trustful of new-fangled methods proposed by alien infidels, nor might
a cleric take instructions from a mere layman, who must, indeed,
address him in an attitude of adoration. The director could not spend
even the limited funds at his disposal, and in 1871 the chief commis-
sioner, regretting that he had no power to appoint a central authority,
consisting of clergy, to restore ecclesiastical discipline and improve
education, abandoned Phayre's plan and instituted lay vernacular
schools. Since 1875, when he received his first inspector, the director
has developed a staff, but his energies are concentrated upon Anglo-
vernacular schools, and there is a complete break in continuity
between the atmosphere of the home and the school, between the
traditions of the race and the only progressive education in the country.
Yet it is the people themselves who insist on the teaching of English.
In the very year of their foundation the earliest lay vernacular schools
were found to be surreptitiously teaching English, and English officers
who prevented this were regarded as reactionaries. Although a back-
ward agricultural country provided no employment for Anglo-
vernacular youths save in government offices, the growing complexity
of English administration could for long more than absorb the whole
product of the schools; in 1869 the chief commissioner said he did not
wish to reserve office to the product of mission schools, but nowhere
else could he get qualified candidates. Rangoon Government High
School, a secular school founded in 1873, produced its first graduate
and developed into Rangoon College, affiliated to Calcutta University,
in 1884.
Minor operations continued after the annexation of Pegu in 1 852
because, though Talaings and Karens welcomed the English, the
Burmese were doubtful, and the higher strata of society — district
governors, circle headmen — ceased to exist. In 1826 these had thrown
in their lot with the English and suffered terrible vengeance when the
incredible happened and the English withdrew. Consequently in
1852 their successors remained loyal to their king and retreated before
the English, taking many of the people with them to Upper Burma.
Simultaneously the anarchic forces in society broke loose, forming
powerful dacoit gangs, who became popular heroes now that govern-
ment was foreign ; their atrocities finally alienated support, but several
survived till 1868, and in 1875 a gang, having visited Mandalay
palace, gave out that it had received royal recognition, harried Pegu
subdivision, and killed the inspector-general of police in action.
Pegu, a thinly populated area of swamp and forest in 1852, is now
one of the principal rice-exporting areas of the world. The clearance
of its malarious jungles was the achievement of Burmese pioneers,
many of them Upper Burmans; they were aided by temporary
seasonal migration from India, especially south India, which rose
from 60,000 in 1868 to 300,000 in 191 8, making Rangoon second only
446 THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
to New York as an immigrant port. The population of Pegu rose from
700,000 in 1852 to 1,500,000 in 1867, and the opening of the Suez
Canal in 1869 provided a further stimulus; Syriam district grew
400,000 acres of rice in 1869, 700,000 in 1874, and the total rice-area
in Lower Burma rose from one and a half million acres in 1869 to
nine million to-day. Rangoon, with a population of 25,000 in 1852,
had 330,000 in 191 8 and is rapidly challenging Calcutta as second
port in India. Development on such a scale would have been im-
possible under native rule, and although Europeans made fortunes,
most of the monetary wealth thus created went into native pockets.
But, as England found during the Industrial Revolution, unchecked
individualist development tends to become anti-social; and whereas
in sovereign countries the tendency is checked by the conservative
forces in society, in subject countries these forces have been overthrown.
The Irawadi Delta, where two-thirds of the crop is exported, and
the population consists largely of homeless coolies, leaderless men,
provides Burma with most of her crime. In England highway robbery,
the nearest approach to the mediaeval crime of dacoity, disappeared
a century ago, and all crime has decreased for generations ; the annual
incidence of murder (including infanticide) decreased from 5*7 per
million people in 1857-66 to 4*3 in 1908-12. In Burma the annual
incidence of murder (including murder by robbers and dacoits), and
of dacoity, per million people, is
Murder Dacoity
1871-5 25-9 19-4
1876-80 26-5 II-6
1 88 1-5 35-4 20-6
1886-90 war (Upper Burma) and rebellion (Lower)
1891-5 30-1 29-2
1896-1900 24-8 9-5
1901-05 26-5 6-3
1906-10 32-0 9-4
1911-15 39-0 14-6
1916-18 39-7 i6-o
Caste, purdah, Hinduism and Muhammadanism, with their para-
lysing strife, are unknown in Burma. But, though nine of her thirteen
million inhabitants are Burmese Buddhists, fourteen indigenous lan-
guages are spoken, and a sixth of her inhabitants, covering a third of
her area (chiefly in the hills), are Shans, Chins, Kachins, Karens, etc.,
who have immemorial feuds with the Burmese. In these areas Burmans
will not serve, the staff is European, and the administration has often
the forms, and sometimes the spirit, of indirect rule; thus, major
chieftains in the Shan States retain powers of life and death, and
administer their native customary law, not the English codes. Slavery
and human sacrifice survive in unadministered areas west of Myitkyina
and east of Lashio.
BURMESE PROBLEMS 447
As for the Burmese themselves, what differentiates Burma from
most of India is that the peoples of India have been commingled by-
repeated invasion, whereas the Burmese, inhabiting a geographical
backwater, invaded seldom, and only by kindred races, developed
what may fairly be called a nation state, and possess a national con-
sciousness. The Anglo-Indian conquerors found in Burma a language
and society unlike anything to which they were accustomed, and
Western education was non-existent. Having to construct an adminis-
tration at short notice, they brought over their subordinate Indian
staff; and, finding Lower Burma largely an unoccupied waste, they
encouraged Indian coolie immigration, paying shipowners, until 1884,
a capitation fee on each Indian immigrant. Burmese resentment is
acute, and successive lieutenant-governors now insist on the employ-
ment of Burmans. Indians still bulk large in subordinate medical and
engineering staffs, but have been eliminated from general adminis-
tration. 'As for European employment, the incidence of imperial
service officers (all departments) rose from one in 26,000 people in
1850 to one in 20,000 in 1900, a year moreover when, of 142 police
inspectors (on Rs. 150 monthly) outside Rangoon, eighty- two were
European. A Burman first became a subdivisional magistrate in 1 880,
a deputy-commissioner in 1908, a chief court judge in 191 7. Muni-
cipalities, created in 1875, have no vitality outside Rangoon; Ripon's
scheme of rural autonomy could not be applied, owing to the paucity
of the English-speaking public, and district boards have never existed.
The administrative machine is a modern machine, needing modern
minds to work it, and down to 191 8 Burma has produced only 400
graduates.
Tribal rebellions in the Chin hills (191 7-19), precipitated by
recruiting, occupied 5000 troops. Otherwise the late war left Burma
so unruffled that after Thibaw died in 1916, a state prisoner near
Bombay, Supayalat was allowed to return to Burma. Burma's war
contribution was not men but raw material — wolfram, and the three
staples (rice, teak, petroleum). The forest department supplied the
Admiralty direct, and in its need of food the home market offered
such prices that no rice would have been left in the province had not
government prohibited its export, save under official control for the
benefit of the Food Ministry.
CHAPTER XXV
THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843-1918
XHE conquest of Sind in 1843 and the annexation of the Panjab in
1849, by advancing the British administrative boundary across the
Indus, made it coterminous with the territories of the Baluch and
Pathan tribes, and eventually brought the Government of India into
closer contact with the khan of Kalat and the amir of Afghanistan.
Thus there grew up two distinct schools of frontier administration,
the Sind and the Panjab. The policy adopted in Sind can be roughly
described as an uncompromising repression of outrages by a strong
military force; the success of the Panjab system depended to a very
large extent upon an efficient political management of the tribes.
Having crushed the power of the amirs. Sir Charles Napier imme-
diately set to work to place Sind under a military administration,
selecting his subordinates not from the ranks of the civil service but
from the soldiers who had helped him in the conquest of the country.
This arrangement naturally had its disadvantages, and, like the con-
quest of Sind, became the subject of embittered controversy. The most
exposed part of the Sind frontier stretched for a distance of about
150 miles from Kasmore to the northern spurs of the Hala mountains,
but, at first, no troops were stationed here, neither was it thought
necessary to place anyone in charge of it. This immediately led to
marauding incursions by Bugtis from the Kachhi hills and Dombkis
and Jakranis from the Kachhi plain, who entered Sind in bands of
five hundred or more, plundering and burning villages far inside the
British borders. An attempt was therefore made to grapple with the
problem by building forts and posting detachments of troops at
certain points, and by appointing an officer to command this vul-
nerable part of the border. But these measures did not prove effective.
Disorder reigned supreme. On several occasions British troops were
signally defeated by these robber bands and once about sixty of the
local inhabitants, who had turned out in a body to protect their
homes, were mistaken for robbers and put to death by the 6th Bengal
Irregular Cavalry, the very force which had been posted there for
their protection.^ Eventually, in 1845, Sir Charles Napier led an
expedition against these disturbers of the peace, but it was only a
qualified success. The Bugtis were by no means crushed, for, on
10 December, 1846, about 1500 of these freebooters marched into
Sind, where they remained for twenty-four hours before returning to
their hills, seventy-five miles away, with 15,000 head of catde. It can
* Records of Scinde Irregular Horse y i, 275.
JACOB IN SIND 449
be safely stated that, until the arrival of Major John Jacob and the
Scinde Irregular Horse, in January, 1 847, no efficient protection had
been afforded to British subjects along this exposed frontier.
According to Jacob, the fact that the inhabitants of the British
border districts were allowed to carry arms was chiefly responsible
for the prevailing unrest, for they too were in the habit of proceeding
on predatory excursions. Some of the worst offenders were the Baluch
tribes from the Kachhi side, who had been settled in Sind by Napier
in 1845. Strange to relate, the marauders from across the border
disposed of most of their loot in Sind where the banias supplied them
with food and the necessary information to ensure the success of their
raids. What was worse, the military detachments stationed at Shahpur
and other places remained entirely on the defensive, prisoners within
the walls of their own forts, for no attempt was made at patrolling the
frontier. In 1848, Major, afterwards General, John Jacob was ap-
pointed to sole political power on the Upper Sind frontier where he
completely revolutionised Napier's system. Under Jacob's vigorous
and capable administration, lands which had lain waste for over half
a century were cultivated once more, and the people, who had lived
in constant dread of Baluch inroads, moved about everywhere un-
armed and in perfect safety. All British subjects were disarmed in
order to prevent them taking the law into their own hands, but, as
the possession of arms in a man's own house was not forbidden, the
people were not left so entirely defenceless as is sometimes supposed.^
No new forts were built and existing ones were dismantled, for Jacob
believed that the depredations of Baluch robbers could be best checked
by vigilant patrolling, to which the desert fringe of Sind was admirably
adapted. In other words, mobility was the system of defence. At first
Jacob advocated that the political boundary should coincide with the
geographical. His contention was based on the supposed permanency
of the latter, but the gradual disappearance of the desert as a result
of increased cultivation caused him to alter his opinion. ^ Although
Jacob, in his military capacity, commanded all troops on this frontier
and was responsible to no one but the commander-in-chief, his duties
did not cease here. Not only was he the sole political agent, but he
was in addition superintendent of police, chief magistrate, engineer,
and revenue officer.
It is now generally accepted that Jacob's methods were inapplicable
to the Panjab where frontier administrators were faced by a much
more formidable problem. The first colossal mistake on the Panjab
frontier was the initial step, the taking over of the frontier districts
from the Sikhs, and the acceptance of an ill-defined administrative
boundary. Indeed, it was extremely unfortunate for the British that
the Sikhs had been their immediate predecessors in the Panjab, for
^ Records of Scinde Irregular Horse, ii, 243.
2 Views and Opinions cf General John Jacob (ed. Pelly), p. 74.
C H I VI 29
450 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1 843-1 91 8
Sikh frontier administration had been of the loosest type. They pos-
sessed but little influence in the trans-Indus tracts, and what little
authority they had was confined to the plains. Even here they were
obeyed only in the immediate vicinity of their forts which studded the
country. Peshawar was under the stern rule of General Avitable
whose criminal code was blood for blood, whose object was the sacri-
fice of a victim rather than the punishment of a culprit. Hazara
groaned under the iron heel of General Hari Singh who was able to
collect revenue only by means of annual incursions into the hills.
Hence, on the Panjab frontier the British succeeded to a heritage of
anarchy, for the Sikhs had waged eternal war against the border
tribes and even against the inhabitants of the so-called settled districts.
The administration of the Panjab frontier was further complicated by
geographical conditions which offered every inducement to a ma-
rauding life. Not only was the frontier longer and therefore more
difficult to defend, but it was also extremely mountainous, whereas in
Sind a strip of desert intervened between British territory and the
haunts of the Baluch robbers, facilitating the employment of cavalry
and the use of advanced posts. In the Panjab rich harvests waved in
dangerous proximity to the intricate maze of nullahs and valleys
which gave access to the plains.
The aims of the Panjab authorities were to protect their subjects
from the attacks of marauding bands, to keep the trade-routes open,
and, as far as possible, to secure the tranquillity of the hitherto blood-
stained border. It was imperative to put a stop to the state of affairs
then in existence; and, in order to give the Pathans an impression of
their strength, the British were forced to resort to reprisals. There
could be no peace while raids were constantly taking place and
individual acts of fanaticism rendered the life of any government
servant unsafe. The evidence of Mr, afterwards Sir, Richard Temple,
one of Lawrence's assistants in the Panjab, points to the fact that the
tribes were absolutely incorrigible. He accuses them of giving asylum
to fugitives from justice, of violating British territory, of blackmail and
intrigue, of minor robberies, and of isolated murders of British sub-
jects. Finally he charges them with firing on British regular troops
and even with killing British officers within the limits of the Panjab.^
On the other hand, the policy of Panjab administrators was one of
forbearance, for, although British officials were prevented from en-
tering tribal territory, the tribesmen were allowed to trade within the
British borders. It seems clear that for over twenty-five years no
official of the Panjab government crossed the border; they were
certainly discouraged from doing so. Whatever the merits of this
policy may have been, it was evidently a concession to the suscepti-
bilities of the tribesmen, and intended in the interests of peace. The
^ Temple, Report showing relations of the British Government with the tribes of the N.-W.F.
» 849-55. »856. PP- 63-4-
PANJAB POLICY 451
permission to trade and the provision of medical and other assistance
to tribesmen entering the Panjab were certainly attempts to promote
friendly relations. But the contumacious attitude of the tribesmen
themselves eventually drove the British to resort to reprisals and
resulted in a state of chronic warfare for many years. Of course it
could not be expected that they would immediately cease from
harassing the border : the customs and habits of centuries are not so
easily thrown on one side. Thus the first step of the Panjab authorities
was a defensive measure; the next was an attempt at conciliation, to
show the tribesmen how they would benefit by becoming friendly
neighbours.
Various conciliatory methods were adopted. The hated capitation
tax of Sikh days and all frontier duties were abolished ; a system of
complete freedom of trade was instituted, and commercial intercourse
encouraged in every way. Steps were taken to protect and increase
the Powindah trade; fairs were held for the exchange of commodities;
roads were constructed from the passes to the nearest bazaars; and
steam communication was established on the upper Indus. Free
medical treatment was provided in the hospitals and dispensaries
established at various points along the frontier; tribal maliks and
jirgas were encouraged to enter British territory for the settlement of
their disputes ; and attempts were made to colonise waste lands with
families from across the border. Lastly, the ranks of the army and
police were thrown open for all those desirous of entering British
service.^
Because the Panjab frontier was too long and too mountainous to
admit of its being defended by the military alone, much depended
upon the political management of the tribes. At first there was no
special agency for dealing with the tribal tracts, and relations with
the tribesmen were conducted by the deputy-commissioners of the six
districts of Hazara, Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, and
Dera Ghazi Khan. In 1876 the three northern districts formed the
commissionership of Peshawar, the three southern ones that of the
Derajat. The system of political agencies was not adopted until 1878,
when a special officer was appointed for the Khyber during the second
Afghan War. Kurram became an agency in 1892, while the three
remaining agencies of the Malakand, Tochi, and Wana were created
between 1895 and 1896. The Malakand was placed under the direct
control of the Government of India from the outset, all the other
agencies remaining under the] Panjab government. This was the
arrangement until the creation of the Frontier Province in 1901.
To protect the frontier a chain of forts was erected along the British
borders, parallel to which a good military road was constructed.
A special force, the Panjab Frontier Force, was recruited from Sikhs,
Pathans, Gurkhas, and Panjabi Mussulmans, and was placed, not
^ Panjab Administration Report, 1869-70, p. 21.
29-2
452 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843- 191 8
under the commander-in-chief, but under the Board of Administra-
tion. ^ It was not until 1886 that this force was amalgamated with the
regular army. In addition, the inhabitants of the frontier districts
were allowed to retain their arms, and were encouraged to defend
their homes.
Three methods of forcing the tribesmen to terms have been em-
ployed by the British: fines, blockades, and expeditions. The idea of
inflicting a fine was to get compensation for plundered property and
"blood-money" for lives lost. As a last resort the tribe was either
blockaded or a punitive force was marched against it. Unfortunately,
the cases in which a blockade can be successfully employed are
extremely limited. To be completely successful, the blockading power
must be in possession of the approaches to a country; it must be
able to sever the arteries of trade and supplies ; and must have the
support or friendly co-operation of the surrounding tribes. From this
it becomes apparent that the success of a blockade is largely deter-
mined by geographical conditions. This is the reason why the Adam
Khel Afridis are so susceptible to this form of coercion. Surrounded
by tribes with whom they have little in common; inhabiting hills
within easy reach of the military stations of Kohat and Peshawar ;
and dependent upon their trade with British India for the necessaries
of life, they are soon forced to come to terms. ^ The Panjab system of
punitive expeditions has been most unfavourably criticised, but
chiefly by exponents of the Sind School, such as Sir Bartle Frere, who
condemned it because the whole tribe was punished for the offences
of a few malcontents.^ Frere, whose experience was confined to Sind,
failed to recognise that the intensely democratic constitution of the
majority of Pathan tribes rendered any distinction between the guilty
and the innocent extremely difficult. Lord Lytton in his memorable
minute of 22 April, 1877, condemned punitive expeditions as " a system
of semi-barbarous reprisals", which had not always proved successful,
even in the most limited sense.* Sir E. G. Bayley, a member of the
viceroy's council, in his minute of dissent, pointed out that this attack
was extremely unfair, for, in its inception, this policy had been forced
upon the British as a natural consequence of Sikh misrule. Neverthe-
less, an examination of the causes leading up to frontier expeditions
should bring the impartial student to the conclusion that there have
been many occasions when the authorities in India have been only
too ready to resort to punitive measures.
The existence of two distinct systems in two widely separated parts
of the frontier, inhabited by tribes who differed considerably in
characteristics and constitution, was a necessity. But, in the Dera
* Panjab Administration Report^ 1892-3, pp. 32-3 ; Confidential Frontier and Overseas, i, vi-vii.
* Davies, "Coercive Measures on the Indian Borderland", Army Quarterly, April, 1928,
pp. 81-95.
* Martineau, Life of Sir Bartle Frere, i, 363-8.
« Pari. Papers, 1878, Lvni (G. 1898), 142.
THE MARRIS AND BUGTIS 453
Ghazi Khan district, an anomalous state of affairs had grown up in
the meeting-place of Pathan and Baluch tribal areas. Certain tribes,
such as the Marris and Bugtis, came into contact with both systems
of frontier policy, for their territories were contiguous to the Dera
Ghazi Khan district of the Panjab and also to the Upper Sind frontier.
Under the former system they received allowances; under the latter
this was not the case. In the Panjab they held possessions on both
sides of the administrative boundary; in Sind this was not allowed.
Under the Sind system, military posts had been pushed far into the
neighbouring hills, with the result that the Panjab boundary was in
the rear of the Sind posts. In the Panjab the tribesmen were dealt
with by special regulations framed in accordance with their customary
laws, tribal system, and blood-feuds. The reverse was the case in Sind
where no notice was taken of tribal ties or of local custom. There, the
prosecution of a blood-feud was considered as malice aforethought,
and no allowances were made in passing sentences in such cases. To
settle this difficulty, a conference between Panjab and Sind officials
took place at Mittankot, on 3 February, 1871. Another object of the
conference was to determine the exact relations between the khan of
Kalat and his sardars. The Sind authorities considered that they alone
were responsible for political negotiations with the khan ; and, acting
under this belief, they had attempted to control the Marris and Bugtis
through their legitimate chief. On the other hand, the Panjab govern-
ment had no direct relations with Kalat, and compensation for
offences committed by these tribes had been obtained through Sind.
In 1867 Captain Sandeman, the deputy-commissioner of Dera Ghazi
Khan, had entered into direct relations with these tribes, which action
had been followed by a period of peace on the Panjab frontier. Far
otherwise was the case on the Sind frontier, where the absence of any
definite engagements was considered as an excuse for marauding
ncursions. One flagrant case has been placed on record where a
tribe, which had been prohibited from entering Sind, still remained
in receipt of allowances on the Panjab frontier.^ The conference re-
sulted in the following proposals being placed before the Government
of India. In future, Marri and Bugti tribal affairs should be placed
under the control of Sandeman who, for this purpose, should consider
himself subordinate to the Sind authorities. All payments to Marri
and Bugti chiefs should be made in the name of the khan of Kalat.
No decision was arrived at regarding the relations existing between
the khan and his sardars. These recommendations were sanctioned by
the Government of India on 19 October, 1871.
During the years 1872 to 1878 several important measures calcu-
lated to improve the administration of the frontier districts were
introduced. 2 To ensure a better understanding between government
^ Pari. Papers, 1877, lxiv (G. 1807), 77.
» Idem, 1878, Lviii (G. 1898), 68-76.
454 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843-1918
officials and the tribesmen, civil officers were obliged to qualify them-
selves by passing an examination in either Pashtu or Baluchi. In the
interests of peace the nawab of Tank, a loyal but incompetent ally,
was relieved of the police administration of his troublesome charge.
To increase its efficiency the militia of the Derajat, a local force acting
as an auxiliary to the Panjab Frontier Force, was reorganised; and,
in 1878, as a result of a Defence Committee which met at Peshawar
in 1877, measures creating a Border Police and Militia were sanctioned
for parts of the Kohat and Peshawar districts. This meant that the
procedure adopted at the annexation of the Panjab was reversed, for
the militia now took the place of the military as a first line force.
Lastly, with a view to their becoming industrious agriculturists, settle-
ments or colonies of Afridis, Waziris, Gurchanis, Bhittannis, and
Bugtis were formed in British territory. This has often been put forward
as a solution to the frontier problem, but its success or failure depends
upon the fierceness of the tribe and the distance it is removed from
its original habitat. It has been tried with success in the Yusafzai
country, but this cannot be said of the experiment in so far as the more
turbulent Mahsud is concerned. This was the state of affairs on the
Panjab frontier on the eve of the second Afghan War, in 1878. While
this system of defence was being evolved in the north, great changes
had been taking place on the southern frontier.
Relations between Kalat and the Government of India were regu-
lated by the treaty of 14 May, 1854, which pledged the khan to abstain
from negotiations with any other power, without first consulting the
British ; to receive British troops in Kalat whenever such a step should
be thought necessary; to protect merchants passing through his terri-
tories; and to prevent his subjects from harassing the British borders.
In return for this he received an annual subsidy of Rs. 50,000.^ About
the year 1869 it became apparent that Khudadad Khan, who had
used this subsidy to raise a standing army, was attempting to increase
his authority at the expense of his confederated chiefs ; and, it was
obvious that, if British support were withdrawn, Kalat would become
the scene of internecine struggles.
"It is surely time for our government", wrote Sandeman in 1869, "to interfere
when we find that the Khan of Khelat's mismanagement of his khanate has led
to the peace and administration of that part of the Punjab border being placed
in much jeopardy; for such truly is the case."*
By the end of 187 1 the sardars were in open revolt against the khan's
authority, and the anarchy prevailing in Kalat led to raids along the
British borders. The climax was reached in 1873, when Major
Harrison, the British agent, was recalled, and the khan's subsidy
withheld, because he had failed to comply with the terms laid down
in the treaty of 1854. Instead of sanctioning an expedition, the
» Pari. Papers^ 1873, l. * Idem, 1877, ixcv (C. 1807), 6.
SANDEMAN'S POLICY 455
Government of India decided to dispatch Sandeman on a mission of
reconciliation to the khan's territories. It was Sandeman's second
mission, in 1876, that led to the Mastung Agreement and the treaty
of 1876, which marked the death of non-intervention on the southern
frontier.^ By the Mastung Agreement of July, 1876, the khan and his
Brahui sardars were formally reconciled. The Treaty of Jacobabad,
signed on 8 December of the same year, renewed and supplemented
the treaty of 1 854. In return for an increased subsidy the khan granted
permission for the location of troops in, and the construction of railway
and telegraph lines through, Kalat territory. The importance of the
treaty lies in the fact that it was the foundation of the Baluchistan
Agency, for on 21 February, 1877, Major Sandeman was appointed
agent to the governor-general, with his headquarters at Quetta.
Lord Lytton justified this advance on the ground that it was impossible
to remain inert spectators of the anarchy in Kalat, when the con-
nection between Kalat and Sind was so intimate that any disturbance
in the one was immediately reflected in the other.
Sir Robert Sandeman's tribal policy was one of friendly and con-
ciliatory intervention. Casting all fear on one side, he boldly advanced
into their mountain retreats and made friends with the tribal chiefs
or tumandars. Recognising that the British side of the question was
not the only side, he never condemned the action of a tribe, until he
had fully investigated its grievances. This had been impossible under
a system of non-intervention which prohibited officers from entering
the independent hills. The weakest part of his system was that it
depended too much upon the personal influence of one man. There
have not been wanting critics who have regarded his system of
granting allowances as blackmail. This charge falls to the ground
when it is remembered that those in receipt of allowances had strenuous
duties to perform in the guarding of trade-routes and passes, and in
the carrying out of jirga decrees. Allowances may be termed black-
mail when they are granted solely to induce the tribesmen to abstain
from raiding. Sandeman never withheld allowances because of
oflfences committed by individual members of a tribe. He always
demanded that the actual oflfenders should be brought to justice, that
the guilty alone should be punished. This system was quite successful
amongst Baluch tribes where there was some tribal chief powerful
enough to enforce his authority. Its introduction by Mr R. I. Bruce,
the Commissioner of the Derajat (1890-6), into Waziristan among
the more democratic Mahsuds, where no such authority existed, ended
in complete failure. Bruce, who had previously served under
Sandeman, hoped that Mahsud maliks, chosen by him, would, in
return for allowances, be able to control the ulus, the name given to
the body of the Mahsud tribe.^ But Bruce made a fatal mistake. He
* Pari. Papers, 1877 (G. 1808), pp. 255-7, 314-16.
« Idem, 1902 (G. 1 1 77), pp. 125-7.
456 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843-1918
introduced his maliki system without first having occupied a com-
manding and central position in the Mahsud country. Sandeman,
on the contrary, reahsed that the first essential was to dominate the
Baluch country with troops. The policy of Sir Robert Warburton in
the Khyber was similar to that of Sandeman, in that an attempt was
made to gain the confidence of the surrounding tribes. But, in reality,
the two systems were fundamentally different, for, in the Khyber, the
object aimed at was the control of the pass. To this everything else
was subordinated. It was not considered necessary to extend British
control over the neighbouring tribes, tliough friendly intercourse was
not forbidden. For this reason, in the Khyber, the British never
interfered with the internal feuds of the Afridis, who were allowed to
wage war, even within sight of the walls of Jamrud, so long as their
struggles did not affect the protection of the pass.
It will be convenient at this stage to summarise the later history of
Baluchistan, for, after 1890, interest chiefly centres in the Pathan
frontier. By the Treaty of Gandammak, May, 1879, Pishin and Sibi
were handed over to the Government of India by Yakub Khan as
"assigned districts", which meant that any surplus of revenue over
expenditure had to be handed back to the amir.^ Although this
treaty was abrogated by the massacre of Cavagnari and his escort,
these areas were retained by the British, but were not declared British
territory until 1877, when the agent to the governor-general was
appointed chief commissioner for them. The ten years preceding
Sandeman's death, in 1892, were marked by tremendous adminis-
trative activity. Communications were opened out in every direction,
irrigation schemes were taken in hand, forests were developed, and
arrangements made for the collection of land-revenue. In the adminis-
tration of justice the indigenous system of jirgas, or councils of tribal
elders, has been developed under British administration. Local cases
are referred to local jirgas, while more important disputes are placed
before inter-district jirgas, or before the Shahi Jirga, which meets
twice a year, once at Sibi and once at Quetta. The province as now
administered can be divided into British Baluchistan, consisting of
the tracts assigned by the Treaty of Gandammak; agency territories,
which have been acquired by lease or otherwise brought under the
control of the Government of India; and the native states of Kalat and
Las Bela.
Closely interwoven with the local question of tribal control is the
more important problem of imperial defence. From the conquest of
the Panjab, in 1849, frontier policy was in the hands of administrators
of the Lawrence or "non-intervention" school, but the arrival of
Lord Lytton, in 1876, marked the end of "masterly inactivity". It was
the second Afghan War, 1878-80, and the consequent occupation of
Afghan territory, that impressed upon statesmen the necessity for a
* Aitchison, Treaties, xi, 346.
THE INDUS LINE 457
scientific frontier. Military strategists became divided into two op-
posing camps, the Forward and the Stationary. Both these terms are
unfortunate in that they can both be subdivided into the extremists
and the moderates. The extreme section of the Forward School did
not know where their advances would stop; the moderates desired
the best possible strategic frontier with the least possible advance. On
the other hand, the extreme advocates of non-intervention would have
held the Indus line ; the moderates were inclined to an advance, if it
could have been proved to them that Russia constituted any real
menace.
The essential function of any frontier is that of separation. But a
good frontier, while serving this useful purpose, should at the same
time constitute a line of resistance following, as far as possible, easily
recognisable natural features, and avoiding sharp salients and re-
entrants. If possible, it should also be based upon ethnic considerations.
There are four possible lines of resistance on the Indian borderland :
the river Indus; the old Sikh line, which roughly corresponds to
the administrative boundary; the Durand line, delimited in 1893
and demarcated, as far as was possible, in the succeeding years ; and
the so-called scientific frontier stretching from Kabul through Ghazni
to Kandahar. Military experts have waxed eloquent over what they
have considered to be India's best line of defence. One thing however
is certain : they have all erred in regarding it from a purely military
point of view, when the problem should have been examined in all
its aspects, military, political, ethnological, and financial.
Early writers went astray in supposing that the Indus was once the
north-west frontier of India. This is the origin of the "Back to the
Indus" cry. It can be safely asserted that the Indus frontier, in the
literal sense of the term, never existed. The British inherited their
frontier from the Sikhs who never held the river line, but the foothills
towards the independent Pathan country. The greatest exponent of
the Indus boundary was Lord Lawrence, who advocated meeting any
invader in the valley of the Indus, for the longer distance an invading
army had to march through Afghanistan and the tribal country, the
more harassed it would be. ^ This contention is contrary to the opinion
of the greatest military authorities who hold that a river is not a good
line of defence in that it can always be forced by an enterprising
general. The defensive capacity of rivers naturally varies, and depends
very much upon whether the defenders' bank commands the other.
This is not the case with the Indus, where the left bank is flat and is
frequently commanded by the right. Although many of the defects of
the old days have been remedied by improved communications in the
rear, the natural defects still remain. The Indus is continually shifting
its course, and, when in flood, overflows its bank for miles on either
side. Again, the unhealthiness of the valley renders it unsuitable as
* Pari. Papers^ 1878-9, Lxxvn (73), 15.
458 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843-1918
an area for the concentration of tioops. Perhaps the weightiest argu-
ment that can be brought forward against meeting an enemy on the
banks of the Indus is the disastrous moral effect such a course would
have upon the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula.
The present administrative boundary, besides violating ethnic con-
siderations, breaks nearly every requirement of a good frontier. To
give but one example : Peshawar and Kohat are separated by a sharp
salient of independent territory, known as the Jowaki peninsula,
through which narrow strip of Afridi country runs the road between
these two important frontier outposts. This is a notorious example of
the haphazard way in which the frontier was taken over from the
Sikhs. Both here and in the Gumatti area, farther south, the boundary
line should have been straightened out long ago.
The Durand line, which demarcates the respective spheres of
influence of the amir and the Government of India over the frontier
tribes, possesses no strategic value at all. The Khost salient between
Kurram and Waziristan is but one of its many strategical imper-
fections. This disposes of three possible lines of resistance. The real
frontier that the British are called upon to defend in India is the
mountain barrier. To do so, it is essential to cross the Indus in order
to prevent the enemy from debouching on to the plains. To defend
a mountain barrier it is necessary to do more than this. The defenders
must be in a position to see what is taking place on the other side.
The greatest advance from the old red line of the maps was the result
of Sandeman's work in Baluchistan. The strategic importance of
Quetta must now be discussed.
The proposal to occupy Quetta dates back to the days of General
John Jacob of Sind fame, who, in 1856, urged Lord Canning to
garrison this important point of vantage, for, as he observed, this
would enable the British to threaten the flank of any army advancing
upon the Khyber.^ In his letter of 18 October, 1856, Lord Canning
rejected the proposal on the grounds that, surrounded by hostile
tribes and cut off from its true base, the isolated position of the garrison
would be extremely precarious. The next time, in 1866, the proposal
emanated from Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Henry Green, the political
superintendent of Upper Sind, but, unfortunately, it had to face the
united opposition of Lord Lawrence and his council. Ten years
passed. The exponents of "masterly inactivity" were no longer pre-
dominant in the viceroy's council-chamber; Khiva had fallen before
Cossack hosts which were drawing nearer and nearer to the gates of
India; and, more dangerous still, the estrangement of the amir Sher
'Ali had brought India and Afghanistan to the brink of war. Reference
has already been made to the occupation of Quetta which served such
a useful purpose during the second Afghan War. During this war the
question of the so-called scientific frontier was broached : should the
* Vuws and Opinions of General John Jacob (ed. Pelly), p. 349.
KANDAHAR 459
British hold the Kabul, Ghazni, Kandahar line? Some extremists
advocated the retention of all the recent conquests in Afghanistan ;
others recommended a complete withdrawal, even to the banks of the
Indus. Amongst the moderates the stumblingblock was the retention
of, or withdrawal from, Kandahar. The question was further com-
plicated by a discussion as to the relative merits and demerits of the
Khyber, Kurram, and Bolan as channels of communication with
Afghanistan.^
The retention of Kandahar was advocated on military, political,
and commercial grounds. Situated at the junction of roads leading
to Kabul and to Herat, Kandahar dominated the whole of southern
Afghanistan. Easily defensible, with a good water supply, its garrison
would not be called upon to endure great hardships. A strongly
fortified Kandahar would not only threaten the flank of any force
advancing by way of Kabul towards the Khyber, but forces advancing
simultaneously from Kabul and Herat would also be isolated. The
majority of minutes written in support of retention entirely ignored
the financial side of the question, and refused to acknowledge that
permanent occupation would entail a drain of money and men. But
would the occupation of Kandahar have been the end of an advance
into Afghanistan? It was predicted that the defence of Kandahar
would necessitate the occupation of Girishk and Kalat-i-Ghilzai, in
which case the British would have been called upon to defend a
frontier as unscientific as the one it was proposed to abandon, for
both ran along the foothills of a wild, mountainous country. ^ Some
even went so far as to assert that the British advance would not cease
until Herat had been reached, for the greatest difficulty confronting
the Forward School would be to know where to stop. Fortunately
the counsels of the moderates prevailed. They realised that the recent
acquisitions in Baluchistan would enable the British to occupy this
position whenever it became necessary, for in their eyes the importance
of Kandahar was a war-time importance only. Furthermore, the
later extension of the railway to New Chaman advanced the British
borders to the Khwaja Amran range, beyond which a broad desert
stretched to the walls of Kandahar. Closely connected with the
Kandahar question was the proposal to occupy the Kabul, Ghazni,
Kandahar line, which was the outcome of a desire to discover the best
possible line of defence against invasion from the direction of Central
Asia. It was argued, that, if this line were connected with the main
Indian railway system, troops could be rapidly concentrated on either
flank. Neither the right flank nor the left could be turned, for the
northern was protected by an almost impenetrable maze of moun-
tains, the southern by an impassable desert. The retirement already
^ Davies, "An Imperial Problem", Army Quarterly, October, 1927, pp. 28-41; see also
Pari. Papers, 1881, lxx, 67.
* Pari. Papers, 1881, lxx (G. 2776), 91.
46o THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1 843-1 91 8
referred to necessitated the abandonment of this jfrontier. The British
scheme of defence against Russia was settled not by military strate-
gists, but by diplomatists. The steady advance of Russia towards the
northern frontiers of Afghanistan brought about a compromise
between the Forward and Stationary Schools, and it was decided to
build up a strong, friendly, united Afghanistan to serve as a buffer
state. By means of an annual subsidy, together with gifts of arms and
ammunition, an attempt was made to form a closer and more intimate
alliance with the amir. At the same time the frontiers of Afghanistan
were stricdy defined by international agreement; and, as long as
Bridsh contiol of Afghan foreign affairs condnued, any violaUon of
the amir's northern frontier by Russia would have been tantamount
to a declaration of war.
This settiement of the imperial problem by no means settled the
local problem of tribal control. The causes of unrest on the Indian
borderland are geographical, economic, religious and political.
Certain factors, such as the geographical and economic, have been
operative from the dawn of history : others, such as the arms' traffic,
are of more recent origin. As long as hungry tribesmen inhabit barren
and almost waterless hills, which command open and fertile plains,
so long will they resort to plundering incursions in order to obtain
the necessaries of life. The rich daman (plain) of Dera Ismail Khan is
a case in point. The greater part of Waziristan is a region of stony
nullahs and barren raghzas (plateaux), with only occasional stretches
of cultivated land in the warmer valleys. In close proximity lie the
fertile plains of the Derajat, while to the south runs the famous
Powindah caravan route from Ghazni and the bazaars of Central
Asia. Thus the plundering of caravans and the raiding of the daman
have been forced upon the Mahsud by his environment. In the cold
weather, fiom November to April, the tribesmen enter British India
to engage in agricultural labour and for the purpose of trade. In
April they receive their allowances, after which they return to their
hills. For this reason, "the political barometer of the North- West
Frontier is always more nearly at 'fair' in April than at any other
season of the year".^ Therefore, the hot season, when no hostages
remain in British territory, is the Pathans' opportunity.
Although it is often stated that the economic factor is at the root of
almost every frontier disturbance, a close study of the problem should
convince anyone that political propaganda, especially from 1890
onwards, has been the most potent cause of unrest. It has been Afghan
intrigues, either instigated directiy from Kabul with the full cognizance
of the amir, or carried on by his local officials, which have from time
to time incited the tribes to rebel against the British raj. The colony
of Hindustani fanatics, which for years disturbed the peace of the
Hazara border and which was reinforced by a steady stream of
^ Secret Border Report^ 191 7-18, p. i.
THE FORWARD POLICY 461
recruits from Bengal and other parts of India, is a notorious example
of anti-British intrigues originating in British India.
Considerable unrest has also been produced by the practice of
dealing with the tribes through arbabSy or Pathan "middlemen". This
system, the adoption of which was to a certain extent inevitable in the
early days of British rule, when officers were ignorant of the language
and customs of the tribes, was one of the evils inherited from the Sikhs.
In the year 1877 a raid, committed by Bunerwals on the Yusafzai
border, was traced to the direct instigation of Ajab Khan, a "middle-
man" and leading khan of the Peshawar district. One of the chief
causes of trouble on the Kohat borders before the Miranzai expedi-
tions of 1 89 1 was that a local "middleman", the khan of Hangu, had
stirred up discontent amongst the very tribes for whose peaceful
conduct he was responsible.^
Throughout the 'nineties of the last century, especially from 1895
onwards, the frontier districts were abnormally disturbed. There were
two main reasons for this: the forward policy pursued under Lord
Lansdowne and Lord Elgin, and the intrigues of the amir of Afghani-
stan. By the year 1889 Sandeman had extended British control over
the Bori and Zhob valleys, to the south of the Gumal pass. The occu-
pation of Zhob was of paramount importance from a military,
political, and commercial standpoint. Not only did it shorten the
British line of defence and prevent raiding gangs from escaping into
Afghanistan, but it also served as a protection for the Gumal trade-
route. In the year 1890 the Gumal river, from Domandi to its junction
with the Zhob stream, was declared the boundary between Baluchistan
and the Panjab frontier zone.
The opening years of the 'nineties witnessed punitive expeditions
against the Shiranis inhabiting the slopes of the Takht-i-Sulaiman ;
the Orakzai clans in the neighbourhood of the Samana range ; the
Isazai tribes of the ill-omened Black Mountain ;2 and the petty chiefs,
or thums, of Hunza and Nagar.^ Far more important than these
petty wars was the peaceful acquisition of the Kurram valley, which
was taken over, in 1892, at the request of its Turi inhabitants. This
active policy along the entire length of the British border, especially
its later developments, not only alarmed the tribesmen whose in-
dependence has ever been their proudest boast, but it also thoroughly
alarmed the amir, Abd-ur-rahman Khan, with the result that, between
1890 and 1898, Anglo-Afghan relations were so strained, that on
several occasions war seemed imminent. When it is realised that the
inhabitants of the frontier hills, with rare exceptions, are orthodox
Muhammadans of the Sunni sect, and are, in many cases, of the same
racial stock as the people of south-eastern Afghanistan, it becomes
1 Pari. Papers, 1 890-1, lix (C. 6526), 8-9.
2 Mason, Expedition against Isazai clans ; Pari. Papers, 1 890-1, lix (G. 6526), pt 11.
^ Durand, The Making of a Frontier; Pari. Papers^ 1892, lviii (G. 6621).
462 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843-1918
apparent that the amir has been able to show his displeasure by
exploiting the marauding proclivities of these turbulent tribesmen.
For this reason, it was fortunate for the British during the Mutiny
that diplomatic negotiations had resulted in the Anglo-Afghan Treaty
of 1855 and the Agreement of January, 1857. The outbreak of war
with Afghanistan in 1878 was the signal for increased disturbances
throughout the tribal zone. The Hazara border was in a perpetual
ferment; the Khyber was constantly raided by Zakka Khels and
Mohmands ; Zaimushts harassed the Kohat line of communications ;
and Mahsuds from the heart of Waziristan raided and laid waste the
country in the vicinity of Tank.
For some time before the dispatch of the Durand Mission to Kabul,
in 1893, it had been rumoured abroad that the British were desirous
of a more exact delimitation of the Indo-Afghan frontier. This know-
ledge may have led to the increase of the amir's intrigues in Zhob and
Waziristan. It undoubtedly prompted Abd-ur-rahman Khan to write
a letter to the viceroy, in which he warned Lord Lansdowne of the
results of a more forward policy.
"If you should cut them out of my dominions", he wrote, "they will neither
be of any use to you nor to me. You will always be engaged in fighting or other
trouble with them, and they will always go on plundering. As long as your
government is strong and in peace, you will be able to keep them quiet by a
strong hand, but if at any time a foreign enemy appear on the borders of India,
these frontier tribes will be your worst enemies. ... In your cutting away from me
these frontier tribes, who are people of my nationality and my religion, you will
injure my prestige in the eyes of my subjects, and will make me weak, and my
weakness is injurious for your government.^"
The Durand Agreement of 1893 resulted in the delimitation of a
boundary, afterwards known as the Durand line, across which neither
the amir nor the Government of India was to interfere in any way.
The importance of this agreement has been somewhat overrated. It
is true that by putting an end to the existing uncertainty the demarca-
tion of this boundary should have considerably facilitated frontier
administration, but frontier history, since 1893, shows that this agree-
ment has not only increased the responsibilities of the Government of
India, but has also increased the chances of collision with the tribes
and of war with the amir. The new boundary line was not based upon
sound topographical data, for, during the process of demarcation, it
was discovered that certain places, marked on the Durand map, did
not exist on the actual ground. Many ethnic absurdities were per-
petrated, such as the handing over to the amir of the Birmal tract of
Waziristan, peopled by Darwesh Khel Waziris, the majority of whom
were included within the British sphere of influence. The worst
blunder of all was the arrangement by which the boundary cut the
Mohmand tribal area into two separate parts. It seems certain that
* Abd-ur-rahman, Autobiography ^ ii, 158.
CHITRAL 463
this could not have been a tripartite agreement, for there is no evidence
that the tribesmen were consulted before 1893. To give but one
example: it was not until the year 1896 that the Halimzai, Kamali,
Dawezai, Utmanzai, and Tarakzai Mohmands, afterwards known as
the eastern or "assured" clans, accepted the political control of the
Government of India. ^ In all probability the political issues at stake
occasioned this sacrifice of ethnological requirements. If the amir had
not been promised the Birmal tract, it is quite likely that he would
have refused his consent to the inclusion of Wana within the British
sphere of influence. In the light of subsequent events it is difficult to
understand the reasons which prompted the amir to sign this agree-
ment. It may have been that the increase of his subsidy to eighteen
lakhs of rupees, and the recognition of his right to import munitions
of war, bribed him into acquiescence.
While these negotiations were taking place Chitral became the
scene of fratricidal conflicts. On his death, in 1892, Aman-ul-mulk,
the Mehtar of Chitral, had been succeeded by one of his sons, Afzal-
ul-mulk, who, after a short reign of two months and seven days, was
slain by his uncle, Sher Afzal, who had been allowed to escape from
Kabul where he had been living as a pensioner of the amir. Sher
Afzal held the reins of government until he was ousted from his
position by his nephew, Nizam-ul-mulk, who was recognised by the
Government of India. It is significant that Sher Afzal fled to the camp
of the Afghan commander-in-chief at Asmar. In answer to the new
Mehtar's request, a mission under Dr Robertson was dispatched to
Chitral. Although Robertson advocated the retention of British
troops in Chitral and Yassin,^ Lord Lansdowne, towards the end of
1893, issued instructions for the withdrawal of the political oflficer
fi-om Chitral, if no further complications occurred. Two factors were
instrumental in reversing this decision. It was considered inexpedient
to withdraw so long as the Pamir boundary dispute with Russia
afforded an excuse for aggressive action from that direction. It was
further feared that, owing to the hostile attitude of Umra Khan of
Jandol, on the southern borders of Chitral, withdrawal would be
followed by a period of anarchy. In January, 1895, the Mehtar was
murdered, and Sher Afzal once more appeared on the scene. To make
matters worse, Umra Khan proclaimed a jehad throughout Dir, Swat,
and Bajaur, and Robertson found himself besieged in Fort Chitral by
a combined force of Chitralis and Pathans.^ This necessitated the
immediate dispatch of a relief column. The memorable siege from
4 March to 19 April, 1895; the heroic efforts of the defenders; Kelly's
marvellous march of 350 miles in 35 days from Gilgit ; and the advance
of Sir Robert Low by way of the Malakand are well known to students
of the frontier problem.
^ Pari. Papers, 1908, lxxiv (Cd. 4201), 125-6.
2 Iderriy 1895, lxxii (C. 7864), 27-9. * Iderriy pp. 35-42.
464 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1 843-1918
Prior to Low's march over the Malakand, the only communication
with Ghitral was by way of Kashmir and the isolated position of
Gilgit. Not only was this route circuitous and the roads bad, but
Gilgit for many months in the year was cut off by snow from both
India and Chitral. The question of the retention of a garrison in
Chitral therefore hinged on the proposal to construct a more direct
road over the Malakand. As soon as it had been decided to move
troops over the Malakand and Lowarai to Chitral, a proclamation
had been issued on 14 March, 1895, to the people of Swat and Bajaur,
to the effect that if they granted British forces an unmolested passage
through their territories, their country would not be occupied.^ On
8 May, 1895, the Government of India decided to retain a garrison in
Ghitral ; and, to ensure its safety, proposed the construction of a road
from Peshawar through Swat. This decision did not meet with the
approval of Lord Rosebery's cabinet and the liberal government at
home. Once more, however, was an important imperial problem to
become the sport of English party politics, for this decision was reversed
by Lord Salisbury's government in August of the same year. The
liberal contention, that the construction of the new road was a de-
liberate breach of faith with the tribes and contrary to the spirit of the
proclamation, was merely a party cry, for the tribes, with one excep-
tion, had paid no heed to the proclamation and had resisted the
British advance. ^
Is the retention of a garrison in Ghitral a strategic necessity for the
protection of that part of the frontier? It was pointed out at the time
that, by the Durand Agreement, the amir had pledged himself not to
interfere in Swat, Bajaur, or Ghitral: consequently all danger from
Afghanistan had passed away. On the other hand, it should have
been remembered that Afghan intrigues had played no small part in
the recent struggles in Ghitral. On 10 September, 1895, the Pamir
boundary dispute came to an end, and the spheres of influence of
Great Britain and Russia were definitely mapped out in that region.
Some authorities were therefore of opinion that the danger of Russian
aggression had passed away. The answer to this was that the Pamir
Agreement had brought Russia a great extension of military and
political prestige, because she had been allowed to advance her
frontiers to the Hindu Kush. Military experts were at loggerheads.
Lord Roberts lent his support to the advocates of retention. Arrayed
against him were formidable antagonists, such as Sir Donald Stewart,
Sir Neville Ghamberlain, Sir John Adye, Sir Gharles Gough, and
Lord Ghelmsford. It is, however, difficult to see how any effective
movement could be made by Russia from the Ghitral side, unless she
were in complete military occupation of Afghanistan, or in friendly
alliance with the amir. In 1895 the danger of an attack upon India
from the direction of Ghitral was infinitesimal.
1 Pari. Papersy 1895, Lxxn (C. 7864), p. 39. * /^/^^ 1896, lx (G. 8037), 9-10.
THE MAIZAR OUTRAGE 465
The echoes of the Ghitral expedition had no sooner died away than
the frontier was abnormally disturbed by the conflagration of 1897.
The first outbreak occurred in the Tochi valley, which had been taken
over, at the request of its Dawari inhabitants, in 1895. Here, on
10 June, 1897, the political officer and his escort were treacherously
attacked in the village of Maizar. Thence the revolt spread into Swat,
where the tribesmen rose under Sadullah Khan, the Mad Mullah,
and attacked the Malakand and Ghakdarra. The next to rebel were
the Mohmands, who, under Najm-ud-din, the Adda Mullah, attacked
the village of Shankargarh in the Peshawar district. Finally, the
Orakzais and Afridis, instigated by Mullah Sayyid Akbar, an Aka
Khel Afridi, captured the Khyber forts and laid siege to the Samana
posts. The result was that troops had to be marched to Datta Khel in
the Tochi; to Swat, Bajaur, Ghamla, the Utman Khel country, and
Buner. The Mohmands were punished by a force operating from
Peshawar ; and lastly, a well-organised expeditionary force penetrated
into the heart of Orakzai and Afridi Tirah.
Many frontier officials believed that each rising had its own par-
ticular local cause ; that, in the beginning, there was not the slightest
connection between the Malakand, Afridi, and Maizar disturbances.^
The relative importance of fanaticism, Afghan and other intrigues,
and the feeling of unrest engendered by discontent at tribal allowances,
as causes of the Maizar outrage, will perhaps never be definitely
determined, but it seems certain that the exaggerated reports of this
affair, disseminated by and-British mullahs, did tend to affect the rest
of the border — to some extent Maizar heralded the approaching storm.
The main factors underlying the 1897 risings were the active
forward policy pursued in the 'nineties and the influence of fanaticism.
There can be no doubt that this policy of intervention in tribal affairs
had thoroughly alarmed and annoyed the amir. The charges brought
against Abd-ur-rahman were that he had received deputations from
the Bridsh tribal zone ; that he had failed to prevent his regular troops
and subjects from joining tribal lashkars ; and that he had granted an
asylum to the enemies of the Government of India. It is a well-known
fact that he addressed an assembly of mullahs from all parts of
Afghanistan and the frontier, and impressed upon them that it was
the duty of all true believers to wipe out the infidel. It is significant,
too, that at the same time he assumed the title of Zia-ul-Millat wa-
ud-Din, the "Light of the Nation and Religion". The publication of
the amir's book entitled Taqwim-ud-din, "Gatechism" or "Almanac
of Religion", which dealt with the question of a jehad, was, to say the
least, inopportune. A correct interpretation of this book may have
been perfectly harmless ; the construcdon placed upon it by frontier
mullahs and its distribution within the British tribal zone were not
calculated to promote peaceful relations.
^ Bruce, Forward Policy and its Results, p. 141 .
C H I VI 30
466 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1 843-1 91 8
In 1897 a spirit of fanaticism was in the air. Wholesale massacres of
Christians had taken place; the Turks had been victorious over the
infidel Greeks; the Arabs of the Sudan had broken British squares;
and behind it all was the sinister figure of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
British prestige was very low indeed until that crusliing blow at
Omdurman. It would be difficult to state how far these happenings
affected the Indian frontier, but certain letters discovered in Mullah
Sayyid Akbar*s house in the Waran valley of Tirah show clearly the
wild rumours that were prevalent. ^ Contemporary opinion, especially
that of officers and officials in the war zone, favoured fanaticism as
the chief cause of the outbreak, but they have ever been ready to
confuse fanaticism with the natural desire of the tribesmen for inde-
pendence.
If the risings were the outcome of a more forward policy, why did
the movement not spread to Baluchistan and Kurram? A detailed
answer to this question would revive one of the greatest of frontier
controversies, the respective merits and demerits of the Sandeman and
•Panjab systems. The answer lies in the difference between the Baluch
and Pathan, in tribal constitution and in racial characteristics, and
in the fact that Baluchistan had long enjoyed an ordered administra-
tion. Although minor disturbances did take place among the Sarawan
Brahui chiefs and in Makran, it would be difficult to connect them
with the northern Pathan upheaval. As for the Turis of Kurram, they
were Shiahs and at deadly enmity with their Sunni neighbours.
Thus, when Lord Curzon arrived in India, in January, 1899, the
Government of India had successfully brought to a conclusion a series
of punitive expeditions against widespread and violent tribal risings.
The new viceroy found more than 1 0,000 troops cantoned across the
administrative border, in the Khyber, on the Samana range, in
Waziristan, and in the Malakand area. Not only were these advanced
positions many miles from a base, but they were also entirely uncon-
nected by lateral communications, and were consequendy in constant
danger of being overpowered before supports could be rushed to their
assistance. The lesson of 1897 seemed to have had no effect upon the
authorities in India, for, not only were they still persisting in a policy
of dispersion instead of concentration of forces, but proposals were
also being brought forward for the construction of fresh and costly
fortifications in tribal territory. ^ Fortunately, wiser counsels prevailed
under Lord Curzon, whose policy can be described as one of with-
drawal and concentration. In other words, the policy pursued in the
'nineties was to be replaced by one of non-interference resembling in
many respects the old "close border'* system. What Lord Curzon
accomplished can be best summed up in his own words :
Withdrawal of British forces from advanced positions, employment of tribal
forces in defence of tribal country, concentration of British forces in British
1 Pari. Papers, 1898 (G. 8714), Appendix G, p. 39 c. ^ Idem, 1901 (Gd. 496), p. 116.
CURZON'S POLICY 467
territory behind them as a safeguard and a support, improvement of communica-
tions in the rear.^
The important point to remember about his militia scheme is that he
recognised that a tribal militia would break down, if called upon to
perform the duties of regulars. Consequently, he arranged for their
protection and support by movable columns and light railways. By
1 904 the new system was in operation along the whole frontier from
Chitral to Baluchistan. All regular troops had been withdrawn from
Gilgit, and the protection of that isolated position left in the hands of
the Kashmir Imperial Service troops. In Chitral alone were regular
forces to be found. These were concentrated at Kila Drosh in the
extreme south, at a discreet distance from the Mehtar's capital.
Mastuj was the headquarters of the Chitrali irregulars. In 1902 the
Khar Movable Column was withdrawn and regulars stationed at
Chakdarra, Malakand and Dargai. Chakdarra was of great im-
portance owing to the fact that the Swat river had been bridged at
that spot, and because it was the starting-point of the famous road to
Chitral. All the outlying posts were held by the Dir and Swat levies,
who were responsible for the safety of the road. To support the
Malakand garrisons, a light railway was constructed from Naushahra
to Dargai. Similarly, regular troops were withdrawn from the Khyber,
which was guarded by the reorganised Khyber Rifles, consisting of
two battalions under British officers. For their support a flying
column was kept in constant readiness at Peshawar, which was con-
nected with Jamrud by an extension of the broad gauge railway, with
Landi Kotal by a road running through the Mullagori country, and
with Kohat by a cart-road running through the Kohat pass. The
Mullagori road was an alternative route to the Khyber, and its con-
struction had been previously advocated by Sir Robert Warburton.
The bridge over the Indus at Kushalgarh and the extension of the
railway from Kohat to Thai were not completed during Lord Curzon's
term of office. In the Orakzai country, the Samana Rifles were raised,
and were supported by British troops at Kohat. British garrisons were
recalled from Kurram and were replaced by two battalions of the
Kurram Militia, equipped and officered on the same lines as the
Khyber Rifles. In the Waziri country, the Northern and Southern
Waziristan Militia were raised for the protection of the Tochi and
Gumal passes respectively, and were supported by movable columns
stationed at Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan. In Baluchistan the
Quetta-Nushki railway was commenced, but it was not completed
until 1905. This line played an important part in the later develop-
ment of the Nushki-Seistan caravan route.
The creation of the North-West Frontier Province was the consum-
mation of all Curzon's frontier policy. For at least aquarterof a century
1 Budget speech, 30 March, 1904.
30-2
468 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843-1918
viceroys and frontier administrators had put forward proposals for the
formation of a new administrative unit. In 1843, six years before the
Panjab was wrested from its Sikh owners, Sind had been placed under
the government of Bombay. Had the Panjab been annexed first, in
all probability Sind would have been incorporated with it, for these
two areas are connected by the strongest of all natural links, a large
river. During the governor-generalship of Lord Dalhousie a proposal
had been made to unite them, but, for financial reasons, it was not
sanctioned by the court of directors.^ After the Mutiny the question
was reconsidered, but, owing to the backward state of communications
along the Indus, Lord Canning refused to give his consent. Moreover,
Sind was prospering under the excellent administration of Sir Bartle
Frere. The status quo was, therefore, maintained, and, even to-day, in
spite of distance, Sind remains under the government of Bombay.
Lord Lytton sought to solve the problem by the creation of an
enormous trans-Indus province, consisting of the six frontier districts
of the Panjab and of the trans-Indus districts of Sind, with the ex-
ception of Karachi. 2 To compensate Bombay for the loss of trans-
Indus Sind, Lytton proposed that it should receive the whole, or part,
of the Central Provinces. It was this proposal which contributed
largely to the non-acceptance of his scheme. During the viceroyalty
of Lord Lansdowne the proposal was revived in its original form, but,
owing to the formation of the Baluchistan Agency, Sind had ceased
to be a frontier district. Nothing had been done when Lord Curzon
assumed office, although the secretary of state, in his dispatch of
5 August, 1898, had pointed out the desirability of placing tribal
policy more directly under the control and supervision of the Govern-
ment of India.3 After carefully considering all previous proposals,
Lord Curzon determined to carve out a new frontier province across
the Indus. The reasons which led him to take this step are clearly laid
down in his minute of 27 August, 1900. The most important reason
for the change was that between the frontier system and the authority
of the viceroy there was placed a subordinate government, through
whose hands all frontier questions had to pass before they reached the
Government of India. He pointed out that under this system, with its
long official chain of reference, rapidity of action and swiftness of
decision, both of which were essential on an exposed frontier, were
well-nigh impossible.
Politically, the new province was divided into two parts : the settled
districts of Hazara, Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, and Dera Ismail Khan;
and the trans-border tracts which lay between the administrative and
Durand boundaries. It should be remembered that the trans-border
area, in addition to the five political agencies of the Malakand, Khyber,
Kurram, Tochi, and Wana, also contained tribal tracts under the
1 Pari. Papers, 1878, lviii (Cd. 1898), 5. ^ /^^^ pp, 136-43.
' Iderrif 1901 (Gd. 496), p. 71.
THE FRONTIER PROVINCE 469
political control of the deputy-commissioners of the adjoining settled
districts. The cis-Indus tract of Hazara was not included in the scheme
as originally drafted by Lord Gurzon. It is interesting to note that
between Dera Ismail Khan and Hazara there was only one trans-
Indus tract which was not taken away from the Panjab; the trans-
riverain tahsil of Isa Khel, the inhabitants of which were non-Pashtu-
speaking Pathans, remained within the limits of the Panjab. The head
of the new unit was to be a chief commissioner and agent to the
governor-general, to be appointed by and responsible to the Govern-
ment of India. In addition, there was to be both a revenue and a
judicial commissioner.
The first chief commissioner was Lieutenant-Golonel H. A. Deane,
whose staff consisted of officers of the political department of the
Government of India, members of the provincial and subordinate
civil services, police officers, and officers specially recruited for the
militia, engineering, education, medicine, and forestry departments.^
The civil and judicial administration of the settled districts approxi-
mated to that obtaining elsewhere in British India. Each of the five
districts was placed under a deputy-commissioner who was assisted
by the usual tahsildars, naib-tahsildars, kanungos, and patwaris. The
judicial commissioner, Mr C. E. Bunbury, was the controlling
authority in the judicial branch of the administration, his court being
the highest criminal and appellate tribunal in the province. Sub-
ordinate to him were the two divisional and sessions judges of Peshawar
and the Derajat. The revenue administration of the whole settled area
was likewise under the control of the revenue commissioner, Mr (after-
wards Sir) Michael O'Dwyer.
It was, however, found impossible to separate the administration of
the five settled districts from the political control of the adjoining
unadministered areas. This had always been the case. Nevertheless,
before the formation of the new province, a suggestion had been
brought forward to make the commissioner of Peshawar directly re-
sponsible to the Government of India as far as his external policy was
concerned, while for internal affairs he was still to remain answerable
to the Panjab authorities. Fortunately, Lord Curzon was well aware
that, for at least a quarter of a century, this suggestion had been
reprobated by all the greatest frontier administrators. Neither did
he fail to realise that the administrative boundary was an arbitrary
line drawn through the limits of a more or less homogeneous popula-
tion, that the people on either side were closely connected socially,
ethnically, and commercially.
Thousands of our subjects are constantly visiting independent territory, many
thousands of the hillmen regularly migrate to our districts, whole clans live for half
* A good account of the early administrative system will be found in O'Dwyer, India as
I knew it, chap. vii. For later changes in the staff of the chief commissioner see N.-W.F.
Province Administration Report, 192 1-2, p. 17.
470 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1 843-1 91 8
the year on this and for the other half of the year on that side of the border ; where
the residents within and without the frontier are not men of the same clan or of the
same tribe, they are connected by the intimate ties of common race, of marriage,
neighbourhood and of an association, territorial and social, which has endured
for many generations.^
Before proceeding to describe how this close connection between the
plains and the hills affects the administration of justice in the settled
districts, some account of the state of affairs in the tribal tracts, where
no organised magistracy exists, is essential.
The Path an code of honour, known as Pakhtunwali^ imposes upon
the tribesman three obligations, the non-observance of which is re-
garded as the deadliest of sins, and is followed by lasting dishonour
and ostracism. He must grant to all fugitives the right of asylum
(nanawatai) , he must proffer open-handed hospitality {melmastia) , even
to his deadliest enemy, and he must wipe out insult with insult (badal) .
This leads to blood-feuds, which, as a general rule, have their origin
in zar, zan, and zamin — gold, women, and land. Hence the tribes are
perpetually at feud, tribe with tribe, clan with clan, and family with
family. Feuds are of rare occurrence amongst the law-abiding
Marwats; they are almost domestic incidents in the Afridi country,
where it is not uncommon to find one half of a village at deadly feud
with the other. Indeed, the Afridis are so distracted by intestine
quarrels that they have little time for carrying on feuds with the
neighbouring tribes. According to the customary law of the Mahsud
and the Shirani, only the actual murderer should be punished, but
theory is one thing, practice another. As a general rule revenge
extends to the male relatives of the murderer. There is, however, a
growing tendency in some quarters to blot out the remembrance of
former wrongs by means of a payment known as blood-money.
A temporary cessation of tribal feuds may occur during harvest
operations, or in the face of a common danger, such as the advance of
a British punitive force. The Maidan Jagis had been for years at
deadly feud with the Turis of Kurram, but, in the spring of 1907, the
leading men of both factions concluded a two-years' truce, which was
faithfully kept on both sides. ^ Again, Pathans who are hereditary
enemies may serve together for years in the Indian Army, but, once
across the border, revenge is again uppermost in their minds. Under
this system of bloody vengeance, murder begets murder, and the
greater the bloodshed the greater the probability of the duration of
the feud. Unfortunately, the unruly tribesmen fail to realise that,
under the disastrous influence of this barbarous custom, many of their
noblest families are being brought to the verge of extinction. Blood-
feuds are not the sole cause of internecine warfare, for the tribes are
also split up into several political and religious factions. The most
^ Pari. Papers, 1901 (Gd. 496), p. 75.
2 Kurram Agency Gazetteer y 1908, p. 13.
THE JIRGA SYSTEM 471
important of the former are the Gar and Samil, which appear to have
originated in the Bangash country whence they spread to the Afridis,
Orakzais, and Mohmands. Whatever their origin may have been,
their existence has undoubtedly complicated the frontier problem and
produced a chronic state of internal warfare. West of the Gar and
Samil, the Spin (White) and Tor (Black) political factions prevail.
With the exception of the Turis of Kurram and certain Bangash and
Orakzai clans who are Shiahs, the border tribesmen are orthodox
Muhammadans of the Sunni sect. The important point to remember is
that the religious creed of the Pathans does not affect their political
convictions, for a tribe or clan may be Samil and Sunni, or Samil and
Shiah : the combination varies.
No description of these tribes would be complete without some
account of their internal administration and of their method of
negotiating with the British raj. Even the most lawless community
is compelled to recognise the necessity for some sort of government ;
even the rudest form of customary law needs enforcing. From Ghitral
to the Kabul River the British are able to deal with important chiefs
and rulers, such as the Mehtar of Ghitral and the hereditary chiefs of
the numerous khanates into which Dir and Bajaur are divided.
Farther south, between the Kabul and the Gumal, this is not the case.
Here the controlling power is a council of elders or tribal maliks,
known as the jirga, through which agency all negotiations between the
tribesmen and British frontier officials are carried out. The more
democratic a tribe the larger the jirga. For this reason a full jirga
often means nothing less than a gathering of every adult male.
Rarely, if ever, does amy Jirga represent the whole tribe, for there are
always unruly members who refuse to recognise any control save their
own interests and desires. The tribal council is usually composed of
a certain number of influential maliks and mullahs who attempt to
enforce their decrees by meting out punishment in the form of out-
lawry, heavy fines, or the destruction of property. For the enforce-
ment of jirga decrees, the Mahsuds have an institution known as the
chalweshtis, or tribal police. No blood-feud can arise because of any
death caused by them in the execution of their duties. In ordinary
times the jirga deals with questions of inter-tribal politics, and, since
its functions are political rather than social, it cannot be compared
to a caste panchayat.
Because of the close connection between the semi-independent hills
and the settled districts, a modified form of the jirga system has been
introduced into the administered area. This system is in accordance
with the Frontier Grimes Regulation of 190 1, which superseded the
Panjab Frontier Grimes Regulation of 1887. This regulation empowers
the deputy-commissioner to make both civil and criminal references
to councils of elders, that is, to jirgas of three or more persons convened
according to tribal custom. Where the deputy-commissioner is con-
472 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843-1918
vinced that a civil dispute is likely to lead to a blood-feud or to a
breach of the peace, especially where a frontier tribesman is a party
to the dispute, he is at liberty to refer the case, for investigation and
report, to a council of elders of his own nomination. When the decision
o£ the jirga is received, he may remand the case for further investiga-
tion, refer the enquiry to another jiV^a, or pass a decree in accordance
with the finding, provided that not less than three-quarters of the
members of the jirga have agreed to this decision. Similarly, criminal
references may be made to a council of elders, if it is inexpedient that
the question of the guilt or innocence of an accused person should be
tried in the ordinary criminal courts. Here the deputy-commissioner's
power to nominate the jirga is limited by the accused person's right
to object to any member. The maximum punishment for an offence
investigated in this manner is fourteen years' rigorous imprisonment.
Under this regulation members of hostile tribes may be debarred from
entering British India. Again, where a blood-feud is likely to arise
between two families or factions in British territory, the deputy-
commissioner may, on the recommendation of a jirga, order the
parties concerned to execute a bond for their good behaviour, for a
period not exceeding three years.
An attempt was made in certain parts of the province to modify
this system of trial by jirga, and to assimilate it to that in use in the
Baluchistan Agency. Instead of appointing small jirgas for each case,
periodical ''jirga sessions" were held to which all cases awaiting trial
were referred. It was hoped that this arrangement would do away
with the corruption inherent in small councils and avoid constant
summonses to the members of the jirga. But even this system had its
drawbacks, for, on account of its size and the large number of cases
which came before this jirga, the members were precluded from
proceeding to the scene of each offence for the purpose of supple-
menting by their own investigations the facts which had already been
brought to their notice.^
It was not only in the administration of justice that difficulties were
experienced. To-day the land tenures of the settled areas resemble
those of the adjoining Panjab districts, but this generalisation was not
true of the early days of Panjab rule. When the Pathans overran the
frontier zone, between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, they
divided the land amongst their various tribes, clans, and septs. ^ Their
intensely democratic constitution resulted, with rare exceptions, in a
periodical redistribution of lands, known as vesh or khasanne. The land
of each tribal sept was termed a tappa, and there was a time when
redistribution even of these tappas took place. When this ceased, vesh
still continued within the lappa, and involved the transfer of whole
villages, not merely of individual holdings within the village itself.
* See also N.-W.F. Province Administration Report^ 1921-2, p. 40.
* For Pathan invasions see Kalid-i-Afghani, Selections from the Tarikh-i-Murass* a (ed.
Plowden), chaps, i-v.
THE ARMS TRAFFIC 473
This was the state of affairs when the British took over the frontier
tracts from the Sikhs, and vesh was recognised in the early settlements.
This system gradually disappeared in the settled districts, because it
was opposed to the spirit of British revenue procedure, and because
the Pathan began to realise the advantages of fixity of tenure. When
the Frontier Province was formed, vesh, with a few exceptions, was to
be found only across the administrative border. The most important
exception was the system of khulla (mouth) vesh, which prevailed, as
late as 1904, in certain unirrigated tracts of the Marwat tahsil of
Bannu.^ Under khulla vesh fresh shares were allotted to every man,
woman, and child. The custom of vesh is now obsolete, except in the
independent hills of Buner, Dir, Swat, Bajaur, and Utman Khel.
There is, however, one important difference between frontier ad-
ministrations, like British Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier
Province, and an ordinary province in the heart of British India.
Geographical and strategical considerations make the marches of
Hindustan a military area, and render the defence of these provinces a
matter of vital importance to the Government of India. On the Indian
frontier there is necessarily a large excess of expenditure over income,
but critics often fail to realise that expenditure on frontier defence is
not merely for the protection of the inhabitants of the settled districts
from the marauding incursions of the turbulent tribesmen, but is also
for the defence of India as a whole.
Lord Curzon knew full well that finality could never be reached on
the Indian frontier, and did not claim that his solution of the problem
would last for ever. Although, by the Anglo-Russian Convention of
1907, Russia recognised Afghanistan as outside her sphere of influence,
the refusal of the home government to consult the amir only served
to add more fuel to the smouldering fires of Habib-ullah's resentment,
and his displeasure was reflected, to a certain extent, in the wave
of unrest which swept over the Afridi and Mohmand valleys in the
year 1908.^ But, with the exception of short expeditions, no punitive
operations took place until the late war. It must not be imagined,
however, that this period was devoid of interest, for it was marked by
the growth of the arms traffic, which entirely revolutionised the nature
of border warfare; by the increase of raiding by well-organised gangs
of outlaws from Afghanistan; and by the development of the Mahsud
problem which still awaits solution.
The evil effects of gun-running in the Persian Gulf, which flooded
the tribal areas with arms of precision, first became apparent during
the Tirah campaign, 1897-8, but ten years were to elapse before
adequate attempts were made to suppress it. From 1906 onwards
there was an alarming increase in the number of rifles imported into
Afghanistan, the number increasing from 15,000 in 1907 to 40,000 in
1909. Some idea of the volume of trade may be gained from the fact
^ Kohat Settlement Report, 1907, p. 2.
' Gooch and Temperley, Origins of the War, 1898-19 14, iv, 577.
474 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843-1918
that whereas, in 1906, the price of a Martini rifle in Tirah was
approximately Rs. 500, in 1908 it had dropped to Rs. 130.^ Although
the Chagai caravan route was effectively blocked in 1908, the real
result of this precautionary measure was to deflect the traffic to more
westerly routes through Persian territory. The necessity for immediate
repressive measures becomes apparent from the following report :
It is estimated that over 16,500 rifles, 352 revolvers and pistols and 1,079,100
rounds as well as 137 boxes of ammunition were landed between the 31st March
1909 and I St April igio.^
It was not until 1910, when the British established a rigorous
blockade of the Gulf, that this pernicious traffic was in any way
checked. Unfortunately, these repressive measures came too late, for
the powers of resistance of the Pathan tribesmen had already been
increased. Indeed, it can be safely asserted that this arming of the
border tribes with more modern weapons in place of the old-fashioned
jezails has not only greatly aggravated the difficulty of dealing with
the frontier problem, but has also radically altered the whole situation.
It is always possible to coerce tribes within the British sphere of
influence : it is an entirely different matter when the subjects of a
neighbouring power make marauding incursions into the settled
districts of India. From 1 908 onwards, the peace of the border was
seriously disturbed by large raiding gangs from Afghan territory. By
1 910 the situation had become so critical that the viceroy was forced
to remonstrate with the amir, for it was in this year that the Hindustani
fanatics visited Kabul, where they were received with great honour
by the anti-British Nasr-ullah Khan.^ As a result of this remonstrance
steps were taken by the Afghan Government to root out the colonies
of outlaws living in Khost. The British attempted to solve the problem
by the formation of conciliation committees, of prominent persons
from the settled districts and chiefs and elders from adjacent tribal
territory, for the purpose of making recommendations for the repatria-
tion of outlaws residing in the independent hills.^ British efforts were
remarkably successful, but, owing to the state of anarchy prevailing
in Khost, the same cannot be said of the attempts made by the Afghan
authorities. The British also introduced a special system of patrolling
for the protection of their subjects, but, unfortunately, British subjects
resembled sheep exposed to ravening wolves, for, against the almost
unanimous opinion of the greatest frontier administrators, they had
been disarmed in 1900. Far worse than this, the tribesmen were
better armed than either the Border Military Police or the militia,
the very forces maintained for the purpose of reprisals. In 1909 the
state of the police was so disgraceful that twenty-five out of every
hundred sepoys were either unfit or too old for frontier service.*^ Both
native officers and the non-commissioned ranks were selected, not for
1 Secret Border Report, 1908-9, p. 5. ^ Baluchistan Agency Report, 1909-10, p. 2.
» Secret Border Report^ 1910-11, p. i. * Idem, pp. 2-3. ' Idem, 1908-9, p. 17.
1914-1918 475
military efficiency, but for political reasons, because they happened
to be the sons or relatives of influential border landowners. In addi-
tion, the rank and file were so badly paid that it was practically
impossible for them to make both ends meet, unless they were stationed
in close proximity to their native villages. Not only were the border
villagers disarmed, the tribesmen well armed, the police inefficient and
undisciplined, but the moral of the militia was being rapidly under-
mined by the knowledge that their obsolete weapons could be easily
outranged by those of their enemies across the border. Before 1914
these abuses had been remedied as far as possible by the arming of
the border villagers and by the creation of a more efficient and better
armed Frontier Constabulary to take the place of the Border Military
Police.
The outbreak of war, in August, 1914, aroused but little immediate
interest amongst the frontier population. Of course undercurrents ot
disloyalty existed, and a certain lack of confidence was displayed by
a run on the savings banks in Peshawar. The entry of Turkey in
November created considerable excitement. One of the great dangers
on the frontier is the possible attitude of the Afridis, whose lead in war
the other tribes are usually prepared to follow. The danger of an
Afridi rising, however, was averted, when, on i February, 191 5, the
government decided to double their allowances. ^ Great pressure was
brought to bear upon the amir to persuade him to declare war. In
fact, all the leading mullahs of Afghanistan preached openly in favour
of war, but, fortunately for the peace of the Indian borderland,
Habib-ullah, the first years of whose reign had been marked by ex-
tensive intrigues on the Indian side of the Durand line, remained
faithful to the British alliance. Nevertheless, a wave of unrest necessi-
tated the dispatch of punitive expeditions against the Mohmands and
Mahsuds.
The history of British relations with the Mahsud tribes inhabiting
the heart of Waziristan has been a history of constant friction. Neither
punitive expedition nor stringent blockade has served to curb their
lawlessness. After the Mahsud blockade, 1900-2, that pestilential
priest, the mullah Powindah, became paramount in the Mahsud
council chamber, and several dastardly assassinations of British officers
were traced to his direct instigation. His death on the eve of the great
war did not make for peace, for, from 1914 to 191 7, the history of the
Dera Ismail Khan district was one long tale of rapine and outrage,
so much so, that it was difficult to understand why British subjects on
the borders of Waziristan had not moved en masse across the Indus.
Eventually, in the hot season of 191 7, troops marched into the Mahsud
country, but were able to effisct only a temporary settlement. British
preoccupations elsewhere delayed the day of retribution ; and, until
quite recently, the wind-swept raghzas of Waziristan have witnessed
the severest fighting in the blood-stained annals of the Indian frontier.
1 Secret Border Report^ 1914-15, p. 11.
CHAPTER XXVI
INDIA AND THE WAR
X*OR India, the war possessed — nay, still possesses — a twofold
significance. It was, in the first place, a transient if exhausting crisis
in the history of the British Commonwealth : a crisis in which India
bore herself bravely : contributed substantially to the cause of victory,
and vindicated once and for all her attachment to the person of the
king. But it was also something far more significant. It was a wind
from the West, fanning to a blaze the embers of old Nationalist ambi-
tions, bearing with it the sparks of new fires which readily seized upon
combustible elements already heaped together. Strange enthusiasms
were kindled : unfamiliar ideals furnished fuel to the flames. A furnace
glowed, and into its fires the polity of India passed. That which will
at length emerge from the conflagration remains a matter of con-
jecture.
To describe what India did for the war is to tell a tale as simple as
it is inspiring. To estimate what the war did for India is a problem
that may perplex the wisest, since the issue is still unknown. Inevitably,
therefore, the pages which immediately follow will deal mainly with
the former and obvious aspect of war-time India: and will contain
only such references to the more fundamental matter as can escape
the charge of prophecy or speculation.
From one point of view the outbreak of hostilities saw India better
prepared than her sister members of the commonwealth : from another
she was far more severely handicapped than they in shouldering her
share of the common burden. This apparent contradiction arose from
the fact that the Army in India Committee, the majority report of
which was accepted by the Government of India in 191 3, had specially
limited the part she would be called upon to play in any future struggle.
It was officially determined that
while India should provide for her own defence against local aggression, and, if
necessary, for an attack on the Indian Empire by a great Power until reinforce-
ments can come from home, she is not called upon to maintain troops for the
specific purpose of placing them at the disposal of the Home Government for wars
outside the Indian sphere.^
Accordingly, while August, 1914, found the Indian Army at war
strength, the magazines full, and the equipment complete, the whole
measure of this preparedness was based upon a principle of limitation
which the home government itself was the first to disregard. Instead
of India*s task being restricted to the defence of her frontiers and the
^ India's Contribution to the Great War (official document), p. 73.
THE INDIAN PRINCES 477
maintenance of internal order — responsibilities which, be it remem-
bered, had jointly or severally ruined alike the Moghul Empire and
its many predecessors — she found herself in no long time obliged to
fight for the commonwealth in half a dozen theatres of war. As was
only to be expected, the overloaded military machine could not at
first cope with strains which its designers had specifically excluded
from their calculations.
But if the more prudent might well have harboured doubts as to
the capacity of India to undertake the task which fell to her lot, it
was impossible to question the spirit in which she assumed her obliga-
tions. The great princes of India, true to their martial traditions and
tested loyalty, rallied with one accord to the defence of the empire,
offering their personal services and the resources of their states for the
prosecution of the war. From among the many princes who volun-
teered for active service, the viceroy. Lord Hardinge, selected the
rulers of Bikaner, Jodhpur, Kishengarh, Patiala and Sachin. The
veteran Sir Pertab Singh, Regent of Jodhpur, despite his seventy
years, would not be denied his right to serve the king: and insisted
upon accompanying his sixteen-year-old nephew and ward, the
Maharaja of Jodhpur, to the fighting line. The twenty-seven larger
states which maintain Imperial Service Troops immediately placed
every regiment at the disposal of the Government of India : and the
viceroy accepted from twelve states contingents of cavalry, infantry,
sappers and transport, besides the famous Camel Corps of Bikaner.
From the remoter parts of India, and even from beyond her borders,
loyal messages, coupled with generous offers of assistance, came pouring
in. The government of Nepal placed the whole of its formidable
resources at the disposal of the empire. Even the Dalai Lama of Tibet
offered a contingent of a thousand troops, while the innumerable
lamas who owed him allegiance chanted prayers for a British victory
at the behest of "The Lord of All the Beings in the Snowy Country".
Throughout British India a similar spirit prevailed, even if its mani-
festations were more conventional. Hundreds of letters and telegrams
were received by the central and local governments expressing loyalty
and service. Private individuals and political associations, monied
magnates and poor pensioners, prominent politicians and private
citizens — all alike seemed animated by a single purpose — to demon-
strate in every possible manner their loyalty to the throne and their
attachment to the commonwealth. When the imperial legislative
council met on 8 September, 19 14, there were witnessed remarkable
scenes of enthusiasm : the non-official members vying with one another
in expressing whole-hearted devotion to the British cause. Of their
own initiative, they expressed a desire that India should share in the
heavy financial burden which the war was already imposing upon
the United Kingdom.
It is no exaggeration to say that this immense and spontaneous
478 INDIA AND THE WAR
manifestation of loyal enthusiasm took the Government of India some-
what unawares. No one who knew the country at first hand had
attached importance to the confident prophecies of such writers as
Count von Reventlow, who preached, for the edification of the
German public, that India would flame into formidable revolt when-
ever trouble overtook Britain. Government was well aware of the
fine-spun net of German intrigue so sedulously woven in the years
preceding the war : and also knew what its authors failed to realise —
the essential futility of the fabric upon which German secret service
agents had expended so much money and toil. There were, indeed,
terrorist conspiracies: some childish, others formidable. But they
were confined to a mere handful of persons, whose worst efforts were
powerless to distract government from its task. All this had been
foreseen. What took the authorities by surprise was the whole-hearted
rally of the country to their side. The history of India, it must be
admitted, provided no precedent for the remarkable spectacle now
unfolding itself before the eyes of observers. Since the beginning of
the connection between India and England, the empire had been at
war on many occasions. But with the exception of offers of help from
the great princes, the country as a whole had on each occasion given
no sign of any deep feeling. In these circumstances, the government
cannot fairly be blamed for failing to anticipate the manner in which
Britain's entry into the struggle would arouse all the most generous
instincts of the Indian people. Here was no war of aggrandisement :
no project of imperialist expansion: but a solemn fulfilment of treaty
obligations to defend a small nation. The whole of India was filled
with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, the Government of India was in-
capable of turning this enthusiasm to the best account. Imagination
is not a prominent characteristic of bureaucratic administrations : and
the authorities in India had been accustomed for so long to rule the
country with the paissive acquiescence of the population, while en-
during in the process the pin-prick criticism of an educated class
anxious for the privileges and responsibilities of office, that the uni-
versal desire to assist and to co-operate became almost a source of
embarrassment. To a lesser extent, it may be argued, the governments
of all the belligerents experienced a similar difficulty. But elsewhere
the enthusiasm of the people, after a period in which it was suffered
to run to waste, was canalised into voluntary organisations and sub-
sidiary services, which provided at once an outiet for patriotic energy
and a stimulus to further efforts. In India very little was done to this
end : the government desired rather to be left alone, and only valued
such enthusiasm as could be turned to immediate and direct account
for official purposes. The small British community, both men and
women, played their part nobly, and devoted themselves whole-
heartedly to war work where they could not be spared for active
service. Indians, however, were left without much guidance. In
THE MILITARY EFFORT 479
consequence, the astonishing outburst of popular emotion was allowed
to exhaust itself almost fruitlessly in proportion to its magnitude : until,
at a later date, it had to be artificially revived to meet a domestic
danger and to sustain the unprecedented war effort of 191 8. The
authorities seemed to rest content with the knowledge that India was
safe from revolution : it appeared scarcely to occur to them to enlist
in the cause of the commonwealth even a proportion of the energy
and devotion so freely proffered. Offers of service were courteously
acknowledged: some few were accepted, others were pigeon-holed.
But no attempt was made to set up any organisation which might be
capable of co-ordinating them, encouraging them, and turning them
to the best account.
Only in one single respect, it would seem, did the Government of
India take full advantage of the remarkable position in which circum-
stances had placed it. The country was denuded of troops to such an
extent that the British garrison for the space of some weeks stood at
a figure of 15,000 men. Of the British cavalry establishment in India,
seven regiments out of nine were sent overseas: of infantry battalions,
only eight were left out of fifty-two : of artillery, forty-three batteries
out of fifty-six were dispatched abroad. Instead of the two divisions
and one cavalry brigade, which the government had indicated its
willingness to send overseas in certain circumstances, India proceeded
to provide at once for France two infantry and two cavalry divisions,
accompanied by four field artillery brigades in excess of the normal
allotment. It is to the abiding glory of the Indian corps that it reached
France in the first great crisis of the war. The only trained reinforce-
ments immediately available in any part of the empire arrived in time
to stem the German thrust towards Ypres and the Channel ports
during the autumn of 1914. They consecrated with their blood the
unity of India with the empire : and few indeed are the survivors of
that gallant force. ^ But, even in the first few months of the war, the
Indian Army was to distinguish itself upon many fronts. In September,
1 914, personnel, transport and equipment accompanied the mixed
division of troops to East Africa. In October and November, two
divisions of Indian infantry and one brigade of cavalry were sent to
Egypt. Only when eight divisions had already been mobilised and sent
either abroad or to the frontier, was action undertaken in Mesopotamia
with the remainder of the forces. On 31 October an Indian brigade
seized the mouth of the Shatt-el-Arab : and in three months' time, this
force was increased to an army corps of two divisions. Further, a
battalion of Indian infantry was sent to Mauritius : another to the
Gameroons : while two were dispatched to the Persian Gulf for the
protection of the Abadan pipe-line. In all, approximately 80,000
British officers and men and 210,000 Indian officers and men were
dispatched overseas in the first few months of the war. To replace
^ Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, quoted in Indians Contribution to the Great War, pp. 99-102.
48o INDIA AND THE WAR
them twenty-nine territorial field batteries and thirty-five territorial
battalions were sent fi*om England. For India, the exchange Wcis
highly unprofitable, and, indeed, involved considerable risk : since the
new arrivals were unfit for employment either upon the firontier or
in Mesopotamia until they had been properly armed, duly equipped,
and completely trained. The difficulty of these tasks was increased by
the fact that, within a few weeks after the outbreak of hostilities, India
had supplied England with 70,000,000 rounds of small arm ammu-
nition, 60,000 rifles of the latest type, and more than 550 guns.
The effort made by the administration in the early months of the
war showed no signs of diminishing. By the early spring of 1 9 1 5, India
had sent overseas two Indian army corps, seven infantry brigades,
two cavalry divisions, two cavalry brigades, and a mixed force in-
cluding three infantry battalions : together with the necessary acces-
sories of corps, divisional, attached troops, administrative services and
reinforcements. Moreover, as the struggle gradually assumed a
world-wide character, the area of operations constantly extended.
When at length peace came, Indian soldiers had fought in France,
Belgium, Gallipoli, Salonika, Palestine, Egypt, the Sudan, Meso-
potamia, Aden, Somaliland, the Gameroons, East Airica, North- West
Persia, Kurdistan, South Persia, Trans-Gaspia, and North Ghina,
besides the North- West and North-East frontiers of India.
It was hardly to be expected that the Government of India, despite
the best will in the world, would rise at once to the task of discharging
in an adequate manner the obligations so suddenly laid upon it. The
difficulties it encountered were beyond measure enhanced by its own
peculiar characteristics. Of this government it has been remarked by
a cynic that its guiding principle would seem to consist in entrusting
three men's work to a single individual. In times of peace, such an
arrangement is only possible because the backbone of the adminis-
tration is composed of picked men, thoroughly trained in their duties.
But in the early days of the war, such a condition no longer obtained.
Many of the best officials managed, on one pretext or another, to
place themselves "nearer the fighting " : while for those who remained,
the tasks now for the first time laid upon them constituted a burden
as heavy as it was unfamiliar. After the commencement of the Meso-
potamia campaign, India's needs became urgent. The results of her
sacrifices at the beginning of the war were soon reaped in disastrous
fashion. Her best troops were not available: her supplies were de-
pleted. Owing to shortage of transport, essential munitions were
unobtainable. As a natural result, while the civil machinery managed
somehow to "carry on", the military machinery came perilously near
a break-down. The management of the Mesopotamia campaign
became an ugly scandal : official enquiry serving only to confirm some
of the worst rumours. Indeed it was painfully obvious to all that the
"Frontier War" standard of military preparedness, when exposed to
RECRUITMENT 481
a strain it was never designed to endure, had involved India in a
confusion almost as disastrous as any that might have arisen from
sheer unreadiness. From the standpoint of the whole commonwealth,
it is true, the importance of India's contribution during the early days
of the war is difficult to exaggerate : but it was made at a cost to herself
which entailed a heavy loss of lives, of reputation, and of efficiency.
Fortunately, by the time the Report of the Mesopotamia Commission
was published, the Indian headquarters staff had been strengthened,
and the administrative machinery had adapted itself to new re-
quirements. Sir Stanley Maude's brilliant campaign, culminating in
the capture of Baghdad, and the crushing of the Turkish Army in
Iraq, rehabilitated the reputation of India in the eyes of the world.
One by one the pressing problems which beset the authorities were
faced and overcome : and in a comparatively short space of time, the
machinery of war-time administration was running with a smoothness
reminiscent of the days of peace.
The first, and most obvious, of these problems was the provision of
the personnel required for the various expeditionary forces overseas.
At the outbreak of the war, there were in India some 80,000 British
officers and men, and some 230,000 Indian ranks, combatant and
non-combatant.^ During the course of hostilities, government re-
cruited, on a voluntary basis, more than 800,000 combatants and over
400,000 non-combatants, giving a grand total of some 1,300,000 men.
Prior to the war, the normal rate of recruitment had been about
15,000 men per annum. In the year ending May, 191 7, thanks to the
efforts of the administration, this figure had risen to 121,000: and in
the year ending May, 191 8, it stood at 300,000. From that time
forward, until the end of the war, it was immensely stimulated by
the call for further efforts, as will subsequently be related. Certain
provinces and certain communities distinguished themselves from
the first. The Panjab, under the energetic guidance of Sir Michael
O'Dwyer, furnished 110,000 fighting men in the first two years
of the war. Between April, 191 7, and March, 191 8, it further
distinguished itself by raising 114,000 men. Up to the date of the
armisdce the total recruitment, combatant and non-combatant, rose
nearly to half a million. The United Provinces, after 1916, redoubled
its efforts, and in the last two years of the struggle, recruited 140,000
men for the fighting services. In the matter of non-combatant
recruiting, the United Provinces led the way, providing more than
200,000 men between April, 191 7, and November, 191 8. Among the
particular communities, Panjabi Mussulmans and Sikhs stood out
pre-eminent: the former with 136,000 fighting men: the latter with
88,000 — an immensely preponderating proportion of their eligible
man-power. The Indian states, considering their comparatively small
population, bore their share well. Kashmir sent nearly 5000 com-
1 India's Contribution to the Great War, p. 79.
CHI VI 31
482 INDIA AND THE WAR
batants to serve overseas : Patiala sent 2700 : Gwalior 2600; Bharatpur
1600; Alwar 1500; Mysore 1400; Jodhpur 1300; Jaipur 1200 and
Bikaner 11 00. Other states sent according to their resources.
Another, and more difficult, aspect of the problem of man-power
was the provision of British officers for Indian units. The small British
community in India, engaged as it was in government service or in
industries of national importance, offered a very limited scope for
recruitment. At the same time, the pre-war organisation of the army
in India, with its "Frontier Campaign" standard, had made no
provision for such a reserve of officers as might have sufficed to
replace casualties on a large scale and to fill the junior commissioned
ranks of newly raised units. The first step was to augment the
Indian Army reserve. The English commercial community made
great sacrifices in order to relieve every eligible man. Cadet colleges
were opened at Quetta and Wellington : and a large number of officers
were transferred, by arrangement with the War Office, from the
special reserve or the territorial force, to the Indian Army. Nearly
a thousand temporary commissions were given to men in the ranks
of British units : the public services were depleted of all their reserves
in order that some five hundred officials might join the officers' schools
of instruction now established at Ambala, Bangalore and Nasik. The
result of the efforts of the authorities in this direction is summed up in
the statement that whereas the pre-war establishment of British
officers of the Indian Army stood at 2586, the total number of British
officers sent overseas from India up to 31 October, 1918, amounted
to no less than 23,040.
The provision of specialist personnel was also successfully accom-
plished. At the outbreak of the war, there were fewer than 300 officers
of the Indian Medical Service immediately available in military
employ. But by the surrender of officers from civil employ and the
grant of temporary commissions to private practitioners, a force of
nearly 1400 qualified medical men became available. The establish-
ment of the Indian Medical Department, which stood at 646 before
the war, was doubled. In all, 1069 officers of the Indian Medical
Service, 360 of the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1 200 nursing sisters,
2142 assistant and sub-assistant surgeons, 979 British other ranks,
2674 Indian other ranks, and 26, 1 79 followers were sent to the various
theatres of war. Personnel for the various technical directorates over-
seas presented a difficult problem. At first, since railway training was
in great demand, recruitment was done through the agency of the
Railway Board. Later, when operations developed, the need arose
for skilled staff in connection with other branches : such as mihtary
works, inland water transport, irrigation, ordnance labour, and other
services. Training schools were accordingly started for railwaymen,
mechanical transport personnel, and the like: with the result that
in the course of the war years, some 1 50,000 operatives, skilled and
THE MUNITIONS BOARD 483
unskilled were sent overseas. In addition India provided a large
number of labour, porter, and syce corps for service in France and
Mesopotamia: supply and transport personnel, veterinary personnel,
and very considerable quantities of horses, mules, camels, draught
bullocks and dairy cattle.
In the matter of material, India's contribution to the allied cause
was at least as important as her effort in man-power. From the
first she had a great and growing task to perform in equipping her
armies overseas, while at the same time placing her immense wealth
of raw material at the service of the empire. Her difficulties were
increased by the rudimentary condition of her industrial develop-
ment. At the moment when her sea communications were seriously
threatened, she could not produce more than a small fraction of the
articles essential for the maintenance of ordinary civilised activities.
She made no nails, screws, steel springs, iron chains, wire ropes, steel
plates, machine tools, or internal combustion engines. The munition-
making resources of the country were first co-ordinated by the Rail-
way Board. Excellent work was done; but as the magnitude of the
task became more apparent, it was plain that a special organisation
was needed to prevent overlapping purchase, to restrict to the mini-
mum all demands upon the United Kingdom, and to develop local
industries and manufactures. The difficulties in the way were great,
and to the genius of Sir Thomas Holland is due the eventual triumph
over them. The Indian Munitions Board, which was set up in 191 7,
gathered together the existing fragments of purchasing departments,
and welded them into an organised machine for regulating con-
tracts and amalgamating demands. Local resources were utilised and
developed. Great Britain and America were relieved of a heavy
burden as India became an adequate base of supply for Mesopotamia
and other theatres of war. The flourishing cotton and jute industries
were placed at the service of the allies; the infant iron and steel
industry proved remarkably useful. The wolfram mines of Burma were
developed until they produced one-third of the world's output; the
Indian deposits of manganese ore became the principal source of
supply to the European allies. Mica, saltpetre, rubber, skins, petro-
leum, tea — the list of supplies forthcoming for the needs of the empire
could be lengthened almost indefinitely. In foodstuffs also, India's
services, particularly to Great Britain, were remarkable, for she was
able to place at the disposal of the Royal Commission on Wheat
Supplies a total of some 5,000,000 tons.^
From the financial standpoint, the war effort of India is well
worthy of commemoration. The country is poor, there are rigid limits
to her taxable capacity. Despite these two handicaps, the monetary
assistance she rendered to the allied cause was by no means incon-
siderable. In the first place must be counted her expenditure upon
^ India in igiy-i8.
31-2
484 INDIA AND THE WAR
military services. The cost of expeditions sent outside India does not
normally fall upon the Indian exchequer, but in compliance with her
own request, she paid the normal cost of maintaining the ti'oops no
longer employed within her borders. This cost varied between
5^20,000,000 and £30,000,000 per annum, at a time when India's
central revenues were less than ^^^ 100,000,000. Further, in September,
1 91 8, the imperial legislative council voted that India should assume,
as from the previous April, the cost of an additional 200,000 men, and
from the succeeding April, a further 100,000. The cessation of hos-
tilities prevented the scheme from fully developing, but even in its
elementary stage it cost the country another ;£i 2,000,000. There
were also financial contributions of a more direct character. India
made a free gift of j(^ 100,000,000 to the British Government — a sum
which was equivalent to more than a year's income, which added
30 per cent, to her national debt. The greater part of this amount was
raised by two war loans which together aggregated nearly £75,000,000
— an immense sum in view of the fact that the largest loan ever raised
by an Indian Government before the war realised only £3,000,000.
In addition to these services, India found herself obliged to act as
banker for Great Britain in purchasing the enormous quantities of
foodstuffs and munitions which were factors so essential for the
prosecution of the war. Payment for these commodities was, it is true,
made in London, but owing to the difficulty of transferring funds,
India had to find the money in the first instance. As a result, she
became involved in currency difficulties of the most serious nature,
which may claim to be ranked among her sacrifices in the cause of
victory. In the years 191 7 and 191 8, her whole currency system was
threatened with inconvertibility, the Government of India being com-
pelled to purchase silver from every available quarter — including the
United States treasury — for the coining of 700,000,000 rupees. Lastly,
mention must be made of generous contributions towards war
charities, which, among other causes, bore the burden of Red Gross
work. The *'Our Day" fund rose to £800,000, the "Imperial Indian
Relief" fund to £1,000,000. The various provincial war funds realised
large amounts, which were expended upon comforts for the troops
and their dependents.^ Here, as in other directions, the great princes
of India played a worthy part. The bare list of their donations fills
200 printed pages. In money, in cars, and in supplies, the aggregate
value of these gifts totals many millions. But quite beyond all value
is the imagination and the good will which these gifts display. The
princes placed their palaces at the disposal of the wives and children
of British officers, they entertained whole armies of troops, they
equipped and maintained hospital ships, they presented their most
magnificent vehicles as ambulances, they subscribed colossal sums to
^ India in igiy-iS.
CENTRAL ASIA 485
the war loan, and in many cases gave the scrip to the government or
arranged for its cancellation.
It is only fair to recall at this time the manifold anxieties of the
authorities. The country remained quiet: but the occurrence of revo-
lutionary outbreaks was a contingency which government did not
omit from its calculations. There was a small anarchist element among
the Sikhs, which came into prominence with the Ghadr conspiracy.
In Bengal, the Nihilists, though few in numbers, were extremely active
and formidable. In 191 5-16 there were sixty-four outrages in this
part of India, including the murder of eight police officers. There
were also serious movements, directed from beyond the frontier,
which had as their object the undermining of the loyalty of the
Muhammadan community, already uneasy from the alliance of
Turkey with the Central Powers. All possible precautionary measures
were taken. The Defence of India Act invested the executive with
wide discretionary authority. The establishment of the Indian defence
force mobihsed the entire British and Anglo-Indian community for
the preservation of internal security.
All these anxieties were enhanced by the fact that the peace of the
frontier itself hung upon a hair. Much assistance was derived from
the friendly attitude of Amir Habib-ullah of Afghanistan, who, despite
all difficulties and dangers, kept his turbulent people to strict neu-
trality and threw the whole of his great influence into the task of
tranquillising the border. He displayed remarkable dexterity in
countering German and Turkish intrigues with the militant party
among his subjects, while at the same time curbing the fanaticism of
the mullahs. Even so, there was more or less serious trouble with the
Mohmands and the Marris: while in 191 7 the persistent hostility of
the Mahsuds necessitated the dispatch of a regular expeditionary
force into Waziristan. The border was still unquiet when the collapse
of Russia enabled the Central Powers to carry their aggressive designs
to the very gates of India. German troops overran a large part of
South Russia, and crossed into the Caucasus, while Turkish forces
invaded Persia. In the last country, precautions had already been
taken to offset any damage that might ensue from the failure of the
administration to resist attack or to maintain order. Cordons of troops
had been established along the boundaries of Eastern and Western
Persia ; the Nushki railway was extended, and the approaches to India
generally safeguarded as much as possible. Baku was also temporarily
occupied in order to block the enemy line of advance.
The necessity of meeting a probable German diversion in the
direction of India was the signal for a redoubling of war effort
throughout the whole country. Since the first great outburst of en-
thusiasm, of which the government made so little use, the bulk of
Indian opinion had relapsed into comparative apathy. Early in 191 8,
in response to appeals from the prime minister, government for the
486 INDIA AND THE WAR
first time seriously endeavoured to give a lead to the people. Towards
the end of April, a war conference was held at Delhi, attended by
ruling princes, political leaders, and representatives of the central and
local governments. As a result, all parties agreed to sink their political
differences and to co-operate wholeheartedly in the increased effort
necessitated by the new danger. Central organisations for controlling
recruiting, communications, foodstuffs, voluntary service and war
publicity, were either established for the first time or galvanised into
new life. The result was immediate. The resources of the country were
for the remaining months of the war utilised as never before; and it is
no exaggeration to say that when the armistice was declared, India
was at the climax of her effort. The significance of the struggle had
been brought home in a somewhat highly coloured form even to the
masses : recruiting was at its maximum, and the possibility of further
sacrifices was clearly envisaged. Accordingly, the country as a whole
having just commenced to throw her real strength into the scale, and
being newly aroused to the supreme importance of victory, received
the news with less relief than expectancy. The spontaneous rejoicings
which broke out were not so much a sign that India was relieved from
apprehension, as a symptom that she expected the immediate dawn
of the Golden Age which she had been newly taught to associate with
the victory of the allies.^ Whence arose many troubles which are
discussed in another section of this volume.
So much for the obvious, the external, aspects of India in war time.
But what were the real currents of opinion which flowed beneath the
calm impenetrability of her people? To the careful observer, a dis-
tinct sequence of emotion is perceptible, and this we shall endeavour,
in however summary and inadequate a fashion, to trace.
At the time when war broke out, the educated classes of India were
uneasy. They had realised that from their own standpoint the Morley-
Minto constitution was unsatisfactory. It gave them no power to
achieve the various measures upon which they had set their heart —
the Indianisation of the higher administrative offices : an accelerated
educational programme, some degree of financial control, and co-
operation in national defence. It is true that these classes were small
in comparison with the mass of their fellow-countrymen. But they were
leaders, and their influence counted for much. They were growing
impatient. In certain parts of India, anarchism gained ground. There
is every reason to believe that if the year 1914 had pursued its antici-
pated course, an intense campaign of political agitation for constitu-
tional progress would have occurred. Now when war broke out, much
of this pent-up energy found release in the channels of loyal enthusiasm.
Some leaders there were who adopted the not unnatural course of
attempting to bargain with authorities ; such and such constitutional
advance to be the price of India's assistance. But they found no
support with their fellows, and were compelled to rehabilitate them-
* India in jgiy-i8 ; /m/ta in igjg.
POLITICAL EFFECTS 487
selves as best they could. In effect, it is entirely impossible to doubt
that India's war enthusiasm was wholly disinterested and entirely
genuine. In this fact, it may be hoped, historians will find excuse for
the exaggerated eulogies of India in which British statesmen so
lavishly indulged in the early days of the war. These solemn pledges
of the empire's gratitude surprised India. Her educated classes,
awaking to the fact that the doings of their countrymen had become
a "front page feature" of the English press, leaped to the conclusion
that the British cabinet was about to give some tangible expression
to its gratitude. But as the months drew on, and the prosecution of
the war engrossed all the efforts of government both in England and
in India, disillusionment set in. Little had been done to guide and
enlist the early war enthusiasm, and the educated classes turned back
to politics. Rumours of imperial federation were in the air; some
readjustment of relations between the mother country and the
dominions seemed already in progress.^ What would India's place
be in the new scheme? Would she become an equal member of the
commonwealth, or would the dominions, whose treatment of Indian
settlers had inflicted such a blow upon her national pride, hence-
forward share in controlling her destinies? Moreover, as the war
proceeded, and the defence of democratic ideals became an acknow-
ledged plank in the allied platform, the scope of Indian Nationalist
ambitions became imperceptibly enlarged. Was a struggle waged on
behalf of the weak against the strong, on behalf of the peaceful against
the aggressive, on behalf of the oppressed against the oppressors, to
leave the political status of India unaffected? The heady doctrine
of self-determination, with all the catchwords of modern democracy,
swept India like a flame. The educated classes determined to assert
their right to control their own destinies. They turned eagerly to the
home rule movements launched by such leaders as Mrs Besant and
the late Bal Gangadhan Tilak. Even educated Islam, which had for
so long held itself aloof, joined the congress fold on the assurance of
adequate safeguards for the interests of the Muhammadan community.
A scheme of constitutional reform was hastily adumbrated, and as
hastily accepted as the minimum of India's demand. A whirlwind
campaign of political agitation was launched in its support. Govern-
ment unwittingly added fuel to the flames by arresting and interning
Mrs Besant, whose activities were considered inconvenient. This
action united in support of the home rule movement many Indians
who had previously held aloof from it. The pressure upon the adminis-
tration became overwhelming, and was only relieved by a dramatic
announcement. The home government at length, amidst all the
preoccupations of the war, turned their attention to Indian affairs.
Mr E. S. Montagu, who had succeeded Mr Austen Chamberlain as
secretary of state, declared on August 20, 191 7, that the policy of His
Majesty's Government was the increasing association of Indians in
* India in igiy-i8.
488 INDIA AND THE WAR
every branch of the administration, and the gradual development of
self-governing institutions, with a view to the progressive realisation of
responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.
The effect of this announcement was startling. In the first place
it dramatically confirmed the hopes of those who aspired for India's
equality with the self-governing dominions, thus suddenly enlarging
the scope of "legitimate" aspirations. But in the second place it
threw the apple of discord into the Nationalist camp. The moderate
party, after being temporarily submerged beneath the domination of
the left wing, found in the declaration a long-sought battle-cry. The
extremists in their turn were heartened by what they regarded as
merely the firstfruits of intensive agitation, and prepared to exploit
their control over the impressionable youth of the educated classes.
Thirdly, the Muhammadan community, already disquieted by the
misfortunes of Turkey, saw in the declaration at once a triumph of
Hindu ideals, and a threat to themselves. The "political" section lost
ground; communal tension grew, and a serious breach between
Hindus and Muslims shortly developed. The visit of the secretary of
state to India, which called forth a flood of separate memorials and
representations, increased the sectional spirit already prevailing.
In the midst of all these currents and cross-currents came the war
crisis of 191 8. For the moment discord ceased, and the old unanimity
of feeling was in some measure restored. But long before the dissen-
sions really healed, the armistice intervened. Peace found India
united indeed, so far as the war effort was concerned, but divided on
every other ground, and fiercely discussing the merits and demerits
of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. The terrible influenza epidemic,
which accounted for more victims in India alone than had perished
in four years of world war, cast a sombre shadow over the scene of
victory. Economic dislocation, now become serious, was causing deep
distress to the masses. The educated classes were but little happier.
Their political horizon had, indeed, enlarged, but they felt themselves
disappointed of their hopes. They were distracted by conflicting pro-
grammes, perplexed by divergent ideals. Their country had been set
upon the path of dominion status ; their representatives had found
admission to the innermost councils of the empire in the war cabinet
and the imperial conference. The old stigma upon Indian military
prowess had been removed by admitting Indian gentlemen to king's
commissions in the army. A territorial force and a university training
corps were being organised to give the lie to the charge that England
had "disarmed and emasculated" India. Yet the millennium had not
come to pass. The alien was still master in their country. What was
left to them but agitation, agitation and yet more agitation?
As succeeding years were to prove only too plainly, the closing
scenes of the world war brought to India, despite all her sacrifices in
the cause of victory, not peace, but a sword.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE RELATIONS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF
INDIA WITH THE INDIAN STATES, 1858-1918
X H E relations of the Government of India with the Indian states
offer questions of extraordinary difficulty for the historian, especially
in the period covered by the present chapter. The position at the
outset in 1 858 is full of ambiguities, the available information is most
imperfect, and the existing treatises either confuse arguments drawn
from treaty-rights with others drawn from moral considerations or
attempt to show that the relations ought to have been international
in character as between independent European states. Lee- Warner's
well-known volume, The Native States of India, an admirable exposition
of the government's standpoint about 1900, is an outstanding example
of the first; and Nicholson's Scraps of Paper, a characteristic specimen
of the second. Both are concerned rather to prove a case than to lay
bare and analyse the facts.
Indeed from the beginning the facts are strangely elusive. In what
did the paramountcy of the Company consist and what were its
foundations? The enquirer of 1858 would have found that within
seven-eighths of the 600 odd states with which the Company's govern-
ment was in actual or potential contact, its relations were not and had
never been defined. All these states were tiny and many of them
insignificant. No treaty or agreement had ever been necessary. They
lay under the shadow of their great neighbour, and carried out such
orders as they might receive from it. Nor did their existence represent
any new phenomenon in Indian politics. Every Indian conqueror
had found himself embarrassed by the difficulties of administering the
great extent of India, and had always left more or less undisturbed
great numbers of local chiefs who thus fell into dependence without
ever undergoing the rigours of conquest. Their position had always
depended on the attitude and might of the dominant power; and
what they had been under the Moghul emperor they continued to be
under the East India Company.
With the remaining eighth the Company's relations had once been
defined by a series of treaties. The contents of these documents varied
greatly. One class — the treaties with Baroda, with Mysore, with Oudh
— gave the Company wide powers of interference in the internal
affairs of the state, besides transferring to the Company the control
of external relations. Since the occasions of interference would
assuredly be selected by the Company and not by the state, such
490 RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT WITH STATES
princes were undoubtedly dependent. With a second class — the
Rajput states, for example — treaties had been made vesting in the
Company the whole control of external relations, entitling it to de-
mand in the event of war the whole resources of the states, but stipu-
lating at the same time that the princes should be absolute rulers
within their own territories. Chiefs so bound clearly enjoyed nothing
like international status, but equally clearly retained wide sovereign
powers which according to the letter of the treaty they could exercise
as they pleased. A third class is illustrated by the Nizam of Hydera-
bad, who originally entered into treaties with the Company on at
least equal terms. At the close of the century, however, he was reduced
by his inferiority of power, especially as compared with his Maratha
neighbours, to accept the Company's military protection, in return
for which he surrendered control of his foreign policy, and engaged if
necessary to assist the Company with a specific (not unlimited) force.
No clause in his treaties deals with the matter of his internal au-
thority, which when the earlier treaties were concluded was regarded
as unquestionable.
These treaties all have one peculiarity which marks them out from
most of the documents familiar to the European diplomatist. Most
European treaties relate to states not indeed of equal power, but of
equal rank. They rarely cede any element of sovereignty. Territory
may be neutralised and guaranteed, a succession may be guaranteed,
even in the case of Greece a constitution may be guaranteed. But
even in the last case which went near in principle to the Indian
treaties, the sovereignty of the guaranteed constitution remained un-
impaired. The nearest European parallel seems to be offered by the
treaties which Prussia concluded with the other German states after
defeating Austria in 1866. But time was not given to develop these
agreements as time developed Indian agreements. But no prince can
accept a foreign garrison, which remains under the orders of a foreign
state and constitutes the only reliable military force in his dominions
(and this was the case with the Nizam), without losing a great deal
more than the control of his foreign policy. Whatever his treaties may
declare, he has ceased to be master in his own house, and the effects
of such agreements must in fact always prove extensive, however
moderate their actual terms may be, for the prince's sole remedy is to
denounce his treaties, engage in a desperate war, and place himself
yet more completely at the mercy of the other party than he was
before. What was true of the Nizam was a fortiori true of the other
princes who passed more formally under the Company's tutelage. In
fact, while European treaties have normally constituted a setdement
of past questions, the Indian treaties much more often have formed
a point of departure ; the first have generally recognised and defined
existing conditions, while the second have by their very signature
created a new situation. In form the relations between the Company
THE COMPANY'S PARAMOUNTCY 491
and the Indian states seem to follow the international practice of
Europe; but in substance they follow much more closely the lines of
a constitutional development. This confusion of form and substance,
of theory and practice, has produced many of the uncertainties and
difficulties with which the study of the subject is beset. Again, the
language of the treaties is often inconsistent. The Gaikwar's treaty of
181 7, regarding an exchange of territory with the Company, speaks
of the transfer "in sovereignty'*. One might suppose from this that
the Gaikwar enjoyed sovereign status in the Company's eyes. A letter
from the governor of Bombay in 1841, even explicitly acknowledges
the Gaikwar to be "sole sovereign" of his territories. But this view is
scarcely reconcilable with the fact that the Company not only
managed his external relations, but possessed a formal right of inter-
ference when it judged proper in his internal management and a
formal right of being consulted in the choice of his principal minister.
Such controlled powers amount to something appreciably lower than
sovereign status. In these circumstances a wide latitude of inter-
pretation had been introduced. In the Company's eyes one funda-
mental purpose of the treaties had always been the protection of the
respective states, usually undertaken by the Company on specific
financial conditions. Financial disorder within a state would therefore
threaten to undermine a vital condition of the promised protection,
and was normally held by the Company's government to justify
interference alike when the treaty was silent on the point of internal
management and when it contained an express stipulation against
interference. Again, in some cases the Company had specifically
agreed to protect the prince not only against external attack, but also
against rebellion. Such obligations were considered to involve a right
of internal interference whatever might be the other provisions of the
treaty in question. Frequently we find the Company's government
following the practice of advising certain princes on the choice of their
chief minister, at Baroda, for instance, where it was a treaty right, and
at Hyderabad, where it was not. After about 1834 also the Company
made a practice of insisting that no succession should take place
without its sanction and approval. The ground for this would seem
to consist, not in any inheritance from the Moghul Empire which
indeed the Company never claimed, but in the need of securing the
succession of rulers who would not persistently evade their treaty
obligations.
However, in this matter of constructive rights claimed under the
treaties, there had been little uniformity of policy. The attitudes of
successive governors-general might differ completely. Dalhousie, for
instance, was rigidly consistent in his view that the treaties should be
observed to the letter. When urged, for example, by the resident at
Hyderabad to interfere actively in the Nizam's internal administra-
tion, he repudiated wholly the doctrine that the Government of India
492 RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT WITH STATES
was responsible for the good administration of the state. ^ But this
strict stand upon the treaties was singularly dangerous to the states
themselves. Many states were financially mismanaged, and the
financial clauses always were precise. States which had been created
by force of the Company's arms, states which had been conquered
and regranted, states which had been dependent on the Peshwa when
the Peshwa was overthrown by the Company, were restricted from
adoption in case of a failure of natural heirs either by the explicit
clauses of their treaties or by the traditional need of sanction which
the Company inherited with the Peshwa's other political rights. The
net result was that the position of the Indian states was reduced by
those who desired above everything to avoid annexation, while their
very existence was threatened by those who adopted as their guide
strict diplomatic right.
The position in 1858 was therefore exceedingly indefinite. Beside
the rights vested by treaty in the Company, there had arisen under
no sanction but that of superior power on the one side and reluctant
acquiescence on the other a body of precedents relating to successions
and to interference in the internal administration of the states.
Together these constituted the Company's paramountcy, undefined,
undefinable, but always tending to expand under the strong pressure
of political circumstances. The process, as has already been suggested,
was a constitutional, not a diplomatic development. The princes who
in the eighteenth century had been de facto sovereigns but de jure
dependents, had become de facto dependents though possessing treaties
many of which recognised them as de jure sovereigns.
The change of government in 1 858 offered a great opportunity for
the removal of these anomalies. What was needed was discussion and
definition. But the need seems to have been completely overlooked.
At a moment when it was the fashion to describe the Indian states as
breakwaters on which the Mutiny had dashed in vain,^ it would have
seemed perhaps unwise, certainly ungracious, to insist on the princes'
formal recognition of the changes that had taken place after the earlier
treaties had been made, and to define precisely their position and
obligations. No attempt was made to simplify the ambiguities of the
situation. The treaties were confirmed en bloc, first in the new Govern-
ment of India Act, and then in the proclamation announcing the
policy which the crown would follow. This meant plunging yet deeper
into the embarrassment arising from the inexperience of early nego-
tiators and the looseness of oriental political terms. The dilemma
remained unsolved. The representatives of the crown, like the repre-
sentatives of the Company, would have to choose between giving
treaties a literal effect (which in the past had invariably led to mis-
government, disorder, and annexation) or giving them such a con-
* Fraser, Memoir of J. S. Fraser, p. 291.
• But cf. Durand, Life of Sir H. M. Durand, n, 222.
THE CROWN'S PARAMOUNTGY 493
structive interpretation as would materially affect some of them, but
would at the same time promote the main purpose of all, the main-
tenance and protection of the states themselves, in a growing closeness
of union with British India.
The language of the early viceroys shows conclusively that they
never hesitated about the course they meant to follow. Canning
writes that the Government of India is not debarred
from stepping in to set right such serious abuses in a native government as may
threaten any part of the country with anarchy or disturbance, nor from assuming
temporary charge of a native state when there shall be sufficient reason to do so.
This has long been the practice. We have repeatedly exercised the power with
the assent, and sometimes at the desire, of the chief authority in the state ; and it
is one which, used with good judgment and moderation, it is very desirable that
we should retain. It will indeed, when once the proposed assurance [against
annexation] shall have been given, be more easy than heretofore to exercise it.^
Canning's successor, Elgin, is equally explicit.
"If we lay down the rule*', he says, "that we will scrupulously respect the right
of the chiefs to do wrong, and resolutely suppress all attempts of their subjects
to redress their wrongs by violence, . . . we may find perhaps that it may carry
us somewhat far — possibly to annexation, the very bug-bear from which we are
seeking to escape."^
In short, both Canning and Elgin assumed that the act and the
proclamation only confirmed the treaties in so far as they were actually
operative in 1858.
This assumption was accompanied by a measure that was more
welcome to the princes than any other that could have been devised,
except perhaps a decision to revert to the chaos of the eighteenth
century. "We desire", ran the queen's proclamation of 1858, "no
extension of our present territorial possessions." This marks a great
contrast with the Company's later policy " of abandoning no just and
honourable accession of territory ". The change was so important that
it was resolved to signalise it by a declaration of more than ordinary
solemnity. In the recent past several states had been annexed under
claims arising from the "doctrine of lapse", on a failure of natural
heirs. Such claims were for the future emphatically renounced. In
i860 a number of sanads, commonly known as "sanads of adoption"
were issued to the leading princes. The Hindu chiefs were informed
that adoptions on a failure of natural heirs would be recognised and
confirmed, and Muslim rulers that any succession which might be
legitimate according to Muslim law would be upheld. The significance
of this was that the states were to be perpetuated as an integral part
of the Indian system. They were no longer mere transitory govern-
ments awaiting the political chances which would permit and justify
their gradual extinction. It is clear that neither this most formal
^ Quoted ap. Lee- Warner, Native States of India, p. 164.
^ Walrond, Elgin's Letters and Journals, p. 423.
494 RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT WITH STATES
disavowal of annexationist policy nor its most scrupulous observance
could affect the individual rights of the princes. But it is equally clear
that the new policy afforded them a strong reason to acquiesce in con-
structive interpretations of their treaties, and so tended to strengthen
that element in their relations with the crown which was sanctioned
rather by usage and sufferance than by any documentary engagements.
The first and most general consideration suggested by a review of
the half-century following the Mutiny is that the abandonment of
annexation was in fact accompanied by an ever-growing closeness of
control from the time of Canning to the close of Gurzon's administra-
tion. In part this development was less the result of conscious policy
than of changed conditions. The development of communications,
the building of railways, the construction of telegraph lines, and the
growth of the public press, accompanied by an ever-rising standard of
administration in British India itself, all made for an increased degree
of interference in the territories of the princes. Incidents which in the
Company's time would have passed unreported or only have become
known to the Government of India months after their occurrence,
came to its notice at once, when perhaps it was still possible to inter-
vene with effect, while the changing temper of the time converted
into *' atrocities" actions which a former generation would have
contemplated with resigned regret. Interference would therefore
have increased in frequency even if the current view of political
obligations had remained quite unchanged. But the tendency was
strengthened by a growing disposition to extend the process of con-
structive interpretation. It will be most convenient first to illustrate
the actual policy followed by the Government of India, and then to
discuss the basis on which the policy was raised.
One new element emerged from the direct relations, established for
the first time in 1858, between the princes and the crown. "There is
a reality", wrote Canning in i860, "in the suzerainty of the sovereign
of England which has never existed before, and which is not only felt
but is eagerly acknowledged by the chiefs."^ No personal loyalty
could be expected towards a corporation of merchants, despite the
qualities of their government and the characters of most of their
governors-general. But towards Queen Victoria it was expected.
"Allegiance to Her Majesty ",2 "loyalty to the British crown ",^ such
are the new phrases that appear. In a legal sense such terms had
much the same force as the "subordinate co-operation" of the earlier
documents. But the underlying sentiment had changed, and though
changes of sentiment cannot possibly alter legal rights they may
deeply affect political conduct. The princes were no longer looked
upon as rulers driven by force into an unequal alliance. They had
* Quoted ap. Lee-Warner, op. cit. p. 317.
* Instrument of Rendition, Aitchison, Treaties.
* See any of the sanads of adoption.
THE QUEEN AND THE PRINCES 495
become members of the empire, and the new position was accepted
not unwilHngly. The visit of the Prince of Wales to India in 1875 was
made by all but one notable state the occasion of eager demonstrations
of welcome ; and when in the following year Ly tton held his great
durbar to announce the queen's assumption of the title of Empress of
India, the leading Maratha prince rose immediately after Lytton's
speech to salute the queen under the old Delhi title — Shah-inshah
Padshah.'^ The Company had never attempted to bestow honours on
the princes. In its time the Nawab Wazir of Oudh had been en-
couraged to assume the independent title of Shah; but in form the act
had been his own. But now a change was made. Titles were bestowed.
In quite recent times the additional title of "His Exalted Highness"
was conferred on the Nizam. In 1861 the order of the Star of India
was founded and bestowed on many of the leading princes. This was
a very different matter from the interchange of orders between crowned
heads. And while the obligation of loyalty to the crown has been
repeatedly and publicly asserted, it has also been repeatedly and
publicly admitted by the princes themselves. Even the modern
lawyer, seeking painfully to disentangle the legal rights and duties of
the princes from a mass of conflicting documents and questionable
practice, concludes emphatically that loyalty is owed, though he
would find it hard to justify his opinion save by a constructive inter-
pretation such as he so gravely reprobates. ^ Relations in fact have come
into being not envisaged in the treaties concluded by the Company.
In the field of external relations (until very recent times) less change
has appeared under the crown administration than in any other.
From the first the control of foreign relations was so essential to the
maintenance of a general peace and so indispensable an accompani-
ment to promises of external protection, that the treaties commonly
lay down the Company's right of control in unmistakable language.
Nor did the development of events produce here any general conflict
between the treaty rights and the political needs of the Government of
India. In the case of Kashmir however difficulties did arise. When
that territory was granted to Gulab Singh in 1846, the Pamirs in-
spired the government with no political terrors. The Russian advance
in Central Asia had been directed on and through Persia, and the
extension of Russian authority from Orenburg to Tashkent was as yet
undreamed of Article 5 of the treaty with Gulab Singh therefore
merely declared that any disputes with neighbouring states were to
be referred to the arbitration of the British Government and that its
decision was to be accepted.^ Nor was any resident appointed to the
new state. A verbal promise is stated to have been given to Gulab
Singh that no such appointment should be made.* This sounds
^ Roberts, Forty-one Tears in India, ii, 97.
2 Sir Leslie Scott, ap. Report of the Indian States Committer (1929), p. 73.
* Aitchison, op. cit. xi, 264. * Panikkar, Gulab Singh, p. 132.
496 RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT WITH STATES
possible, since at that time the only disputes likely to possess political
importance were those which might arise with the still independent
Sikh power. The Russian movements towards the North-West Frontier
however introduced new problems and dangers. In 1873 Northbrook
was very anxious to appoint a permanent resident but at that time the
secretary of state was unwilling to overrule the objections of the state.
The measure, however, was decided on by Ripon and Hartington in
1884 and carried into effect in the following year on the death of the
old maharaja, Gulab Singh's son.^ The claims put forward by the
state were that it was independent and "outside the Indian political
system ".2 The first of these was seemingly based on article i of the
treaty by which the territory was transferred "in independent
possession".^ The phrase is exceedingly vague, and is indeed more
applicable to private ownership than political dominion; and what-
ever meaning it may carry is limited by the unqualified assertion of
British supremacy in the last article. Any claim to independent status
does not seem justified by the language of the treaty; while the further
assertion seems entirely inconsistent with the article declaring that
British adjudication on all external disputes should be final. The
evidence on which Ripon and Hartington decided to appoint a
resident has never been published ; but the political character of the
two men warrants the assumptions, ( i ) that they were not seeking a
pretext for extending British authority, and (2) that the evidence
before them appeared to them conclusive. It is in fact highly probable
that Russian agents were busy in Kashmir, although they may not
have been countenanced by the maharaja. So far the conduct of the
government appears unexceptionable. The published evidence re-
garding the remainder of the story is too slender to permit judgment
either way. In 1 889 a quantity of correspondence reached the resident
by a very questionable channel, implicating the maharaja in Russian
intrigues. The Government of India, while refusing to take these
documents very seriously, "accepted the maharaja's resignation" and
set up a council of regency upon the ground of the maladministration
of the state.* Their action certainly rested on mixed political and
administrative motives; and it seems unlikely that they would have
done anything but for the importance of the external issues involved.
As in the control of external relations, so also in the matter of
successions, the crown adopted in its entirety the position which the
Company had occupied. The sanads of adoption issued by Canning
in no way derogate from the claim that the Government of India is
entitled to determine all successions. The existing practice was con-
tinued. Every heir on his accession was installed by an agent of the
government; none was recognised as prince until he had been so
installed. "It is the right and duty of the British Government", runs
* Pari. Papers, 1890, Liv, 231. - The British Crown and the Indian States, p. 85.
' Aitchison, op. cit. xi, 264. * Pari. Papers, 1890, liv, 251 and 265.
SUCCESSIONS 497
a dispatch of 1881, "to settle successions in subordinate native states.
Every succession must be recognised by the British Government, and
no succession is valid until recognition has been given." ^ The basis of
this claim certainly does not lie in text of any treaty. Lee-Warner
would relate it to the customary investiture under the Moghul and
the Peshwa,2 and the Company undoubtedly inherited the rights of
the latter, though not of the former. But this would cover the cases of
only a restricted number of minor chiefs. Another possible source
might be the idea universally prevalent in Moghul India that engage-
ments held good only for the lifetime of the parties concerned. In
1775 the majority of the Bengal Council had insisted on this as a
ground for forcing a new treaty on the young Nawab Wazir of Oudh;
and in 1803 Wellesley had sent to the new Nizam a formal declaration
that his treaties continued in force. But most of the treaties are
specifically extended by mention of heirs and successors. One must
conclude, therefore, that the claim originated in a constructive inter-
pretation of the treaties, reinforced, as time went on, by usage.
For a long time, too, the same attitude was adopted towards the
armies of the states. From the earliest times the military forces of
the princes had been regarded with suspicion or dislike. The first
sentiment was more prominent in the Company's days, when the
possibility of a hostile combination of the princes was a constant
preoccupation of the governors-general. At a later period the second
became more evident, on the general ground that excessive expendi-
ture on military purposes diverted funds from more beneficial em-
ployment. But while the Company's servants might often advise, they
seldom insisted on military retrenchment, and in this delicate matter
they kept in general closely to the letter of the treaties. Indeed, the
forces of the states were in general so irregularly paid, poorly organised,
and ill-equipped as to offer no serious danger after 181 8. In one case
only was an Indian prince bound by treaty not to increase his armed
forces above a definite limit. In 1844, after the battle of Maharajpur,^
Sindhia had agreed in future to limit his troops (exclusive of the
contingent under British officers) to 9000 cavalry and infantry, and
200 artillerymen.* In the 'sixties, however, Jayaji Rao Sindhia had
made a hobby of his state army. "The army was his idol ; its discipline
his constant occupation; the only books with which he has any
acquaintance are those connected with drill and military pursuits. "^
He had made a practice of enrolling men nominally as police but in
fact under military discipline, and keeping the whole continuously
assembled at his capital, Lashkar. In 1867 he was desired to disband
his military police as exceeding the force he was entitled to keep up,
and to refrain in future from maintaining masses of men at his capital.®
^ Pari. Papers, 1890-91, no, 392, p. 13. ^ Op. cit. p. 324.
^ Cf. vol. V, p. 579, supra. * Aitchison, op. cit. iv, 80.
* Daly, Memoirs of Sir H. D. Daly, p. 267.
^ Thornton, Sir Richard Meade, p. 116; cf. Daly, op. cit.
c H I VI 32
498 RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT WITH STATES
But matters of internal management produced the most charac-
teristic illustrations of policy under the crown. In Alwar, a Rajput
state, a boy of thirteen succeeded to the gaddi in 1857. He fell so far
under the influence of Muslim ministers as to have agreed to marry
a Muslim lady. This so shocked the Rajput nobles of the state that
they rose in rebellion, drove out the Muslims, and set up a council of
regency. The change was recognised by the appointment of a political
agent to advise and assist the council. A little later the raja became
the head of a conspiracy to murder the president of the council and
expel the resident. In 1863 he was formally installed as ruler of the
state. But in 1870 he again provoked a rebellion against his authority.
Mayo, the governor-general, first attempted to settle matters by the
joint mediation of the raja of Jaipur and a British officer. When that
failed, he intervened decisively, superseding the raja's authority by
a board of management composed of the chief nobles of the state with
the British agent as the president. With Alwar there was a treaty of
1803, by which the Company became "guarantee. . .for the security
of his country against external enemies **, and at the same time engaged
not to "interfere with the country" of the raja.^ This seems to be the
most positive instance in which treaty terms have been overridden by
moral considerations.
In 1865 the raja of Jabwa, one of the "mediatised chiefs "^ of
Central India, was fined 10,000 rupees and deprived of his salute for
permitting a thief, who had robbed a temple founded by the chief's
mother, to be mutilated according to ancient Indian custom. One
hand and one foot were chopped off.^ None of the " mediatised chiefs "
has powers of life and death. They must submit all sentences of death
or imprisonment for life to the local political agent for confirmation.*
In 1867 the nawab of Tank was deposed, his son set up in his stead,
the salute reduced from seventeen guns to eleven, and the territory
of a dependent chief detached and placed directly under the local
political agent for complicity in an affray in which fifteen relatives
and followers of the dependent chief were shot down.^ The Tank
treaty of 181 7 guaranteed the nawab's territorial possessions, but
contained no provision touching the internal administration.^
In 1892 the khan of Kalat was obliged to resign and was replaced by
his son in consequence of having executed five women and a man, and
mutilated two other men "in a most brutal manner" in revenge for
a theft of money from his treasury, and for having "barbarously"
slain his wazir and two members of the latter's family.' The Kalat
treaty in force had been concluded in 1876. It declared that the
British Government would respect the independence of Kalat and
^ Aitchison, op. cit. in. 322. ^ Cf. vol. v, p. 571, supra.
* TupF>er, Our Indian Protectorate, p. 295. '* Aitchison, op. cit. iv, 7.
' Pari. Papers, 1871, l, 441 sqq. • Aitchison, op. cit. ill, 241.
' Forrest, Administration of Lord LansdowrUy p. 51.
MALHAR RAO GAEKWAR 499
protect the state against external attack, but that the resident would
endeavour to compose any disputes that might arise between the khan
and his sardars, and that in these matters the khan would abide by
the decision of the British Government.^
But the outstanding example of interference by the Government of
India was certainly the deposition of Malhar Rao Gaekwar in 1875.
As the procedure adopted was unusual, and as the action of govern-
ment has since been stated to have aroused the distrust of many of the
princes,^ the matter evidently deserves statement and discussion.
British relations with this prince had been distinguished by a long
series of troubles, intensified by the fact that in more than one instance
the intellects of the rulers had been notably unstable. Malhar Rao
succeeded to the gaddi at Baroda in 1870. His character even then
stood low. He was believed to have been concerned in an attempted
outbreak in Gujarat in 1857. He had been imprisoned in 1863 by his
brother and predecessor for attempting to clear his way to the gaddi
by poison. After his accession he had pursued the chief agents of the
late ruler with singular vindictiveness, not by judicial process, but by
extermination. They had been cast into prison, where they had perished
mysteriously. After three years of his rule the inhabitants of the state
were exhibiting such unrest that the Government of India appointed
a commission to enquire into the nature of his administration. The
commission consisted of three British officials and the late chief
minister of the Jaipur state, in whom both his late master and the
Government of India placed great reliance. The commission found a
state of general maladministration calling urgently for remedy.
Malhar Rao was then required to remove the principal evils disclosed
within a period of eighteen months. Unluckily at this time the Baroda
resident was a man wanting in acuteness and in tact, who certainly
made matters much more difficult for the Gaekwar than he need have
done. The viceroy. Lord Northbrook, was requested by Malhar Rao
to remove the resident, and informed at almost the same moment by
the resident that Malhar Rao had tried to poison him. The resident
was replaced by an abler man, who found that no material progress
had been made towards introducing the needed reforms ; and investi-
gations disclosed a prima facie case which the law-advisers considered
would have warranted prosecution had the accused been an ordinary
citizen. It was therefore determined to arrest the Gaekwar, to assume
the temporary administration of the state, and to enquire further into
the alleged attempt to poison the resident.^ A new commission was
appointed for this purpose. It consisted of the Chief Justice of Bengal,
another judge, one high political official, two ruling princes— Sindhia
and Jaipur — and Sir Dinkar Rao. This was as independent a body as
^ Aitchison, 0/), a7. XI, 215.
2 The British Crown and the Indian States y p. 71.
3 Pari. Papers, 1875, G. 1252, pp. ^sqq.
32-2
500 RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT WITH STATES
the Government of India could well have selected. It would have
included three ruling princes instead of two, for Holkar was also
invited to serve ; but that prince found himself unable to do so. He,
however, described the proposed commission as attesting "the for-
bearance and generosity of the British Government", deserving
"universal applause".^ These words were not, or at least should not
have been, insincere. The selection of judges on the one side, of Indian
princes on the other, marked in no uncertain way a desire that the
accusation against Malhar Rao should be fully and candidly con-
sidered. Years earlier the queen had expressed a desire that in disputes
with the Indian states some way should be found of acting so as to
"relieve the government agents from the fearful responsibility of being
sole advisers on steps implying judicial condemnation without trial". ^
This view was now being put into action, and it is noteworthy that the
method adopted in 1875 is substantially the same as that laid down
for future use in 1 92 1 . All the commissioners, after hearing voluminous
evidence and the addresses of counsel, seem to have agreed that an
attempt had been made to poison the resident by two of the residency
servants who had been in communication with Malhar Rao. The
English half went farther and found the Gaekwar guilty; the Indian
half found the accusation not proven.^ In these circumstances the
Government of India decided to take no further action on the poisoning
charge; but it considered the presumptive evidence against Malhar
Rao so strong, when coupled with his gross mismanagement of the
administration, as to "make it impossible to replace him in power. . . .
In deference to the opinions and feelings of the native commissioners
we should do no more than depose him and his issue, and place him
under restraint in British territory".* This was accordingly done.
A young member of the family was selected as Malhar Rao's successor,
and the administration of the state placed under a council of regency,
with a most distinguished Indian administrator. Sir Madhava Rao,
at its head. So far as the government's interference goes, the action
seems well within the provision of the treaties themselves. The engage-
ments of 1802, confirmed in 1805 and 181 7, granted a right of inter-
vention "should I myself or my successors commit anything improper
or unjust". It can scarcely be argued that the protected, not the
protecting, state was to be the judge of the occasion. Nor can the
provision of the treaty be deemed nullified by the language of the
Bombay governor in 1841 describing the Gaekwar as " sole sovereign "
in his territories. Such informal statements cannot be taken as signi-
fying more than the existing intention of the government not to
exercise its treaty rights to the full ; nor did the state appear to under-
stand otherwise, for in 1856 the Gaekwar wrote to the resident, "This
» Pad. Papers, 1875, C. 1271, p. 90.
* The Queen to Sir Charles Wood, 23 July, 1859; Qiuen Victorians Letters^ in, 360.
' Pari. Papers, 1875, G. 1252, pp. Qsqq. * Ideniy p. 7.
MANIPUR 501
government in every way is dependent on the governor-general".
What is noticeable, here as elsewhere, is a deplorable laxity in regard
to treaties. Sometimes they were to be enforced up to the very limit of
constructive interpretation; sometimes (though rarely) government
chose not to exercise its full rights and allowed its agents to use
language quite at variance with the fundamental facts, thus greatly,
needlessly, unwisely increasing the ambiguous position of the princes
and multiplying the occasions of misunderstanding.
What seems in 1875 to have impressed the princes was, not the
authority claimed by the Government of India, but the moderation
with which it was exercised. Holkar, in the letter cited above, dwells
on the satisfaction with which the decision to preserve, and not to
annex, the state was regarded by himself and his fellows. He had used
similar language to Daly, the resident, in 1874, saying, "The person
for the time being is little; the state with its rights is the point for
consideration".^ In the Company's days, if precedents may be taken
as a guide, Baroda would have been annexed and the state ex-
tinguished. The same would have been the fate of the hill state of
Manipur. Thence in 1890 the raja was driven out. It had been the
custom to support the ruler's authority and definite promises had been
given to this effect. The home authorities had regarded this engage-
ment as of dubious propriety.
"The position, however,. . .imposes on you as a necessary consequence", the
Company wrote to the Government of India in 1852, "the obligation not only
of attempting to guide him by your advice, but, if needful, of protecting his
subjects against oppression on his part, otherwise our guarantee of his rule may
be the cause of inflicting on them a continuance of reckless tyranny."^
The obligation had, in fact, proved onerous ; and the expelled raja had
proved himself but an indifferent administrator. After a considerable
delay, government decided to recognise and confirm the new raja,
who was in fact the heir apparent, but to remove from the state the
turbulent and ferocious chief who had brought about the revolution.
But in attempting to effect this decision, the chief commissioner of
Assam, and four other officers were seized, one was speared, and the
rest were publicly beheaded. A strong British force was then sent;
the chief and the new raja were captured and executed for murder;
their acts were treated as acts of rebellion, not those of war ; and the
state was continued in separate existence. Lee-Warner rightly em-
phasises the significance of the contrast between the annexation of
Coorg in 1834 and the maintenance of Manipur in 1891.^ Neither
misgovernment nor attacks on the queen's forces and the murder of
her officers were considered now as warranting annexation.
A yet more remarkable illustration of the same policy was afforded
by the rendition of Mysore to Indian rule. For fifty years the state
* Tapper, op. cit. p. 117. * Pari. Papers, 1891, no. 258, p. 3. ' Op. cit. p. 183.
502 RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT WITH STATES
had been managed by British officials under the direct control of the
governor-general. The deposed raja had been refused permission to
adopt a son. At one time it was very generally assumed that the state
had passed permanendy into BriUsh possession. Yet, when the old raja
died in 1868, it was resolved that his adopted son should succeed to
the government of the state if, when he came of age, he should be found
qualified for the posidon. Accordingly he was installed as raja in
1 88 1. The Government of India seized this opportunity of determining
with precision what were the rights and duties of the state and of the
paramount power respectively, and the instrument of transfer, dated
I March, 1881, sums up what the government of the crown had come
to regard as the ideal reladonship between it and the subordinate
Indian states. This modern document deserves comparison with the
1799 treaty which similarly sums up the views of policy held by
Wellesley, in this matter the most enlightened of all the Company's
governors-general. The present writer has discussed elsewhere^ the
change of outlook displayed by these documents. Financial stability
was the main object of the earlier, good government the main object
of the later. But in many ways the provisions touching the status of
the ruler of Mysore are perhaps the most interesting. The word
"sovereignty ", for instance, nowhere occurs in the instrument of trans-
fer except when referring to Bridsh sovereignty. The prince is to be
"placed in possession of the territories " which he is " to hold possession
of and administer". No succession is valid until recognised by the
governor-general in council. The prince must "remain faithful in
allegiance and subordination to Her Majesty". The separate Mysore
coinage, long discontinued, shall not be revived. The military forces
of the state "shall not exceed the strength which the governor-general
in council shall from time to time fix". The laws and rules in force
at the time of the transfer shall remain unchanged unless the governor-
general in council approves. It is noteworthy that these limitations
were imposed on one of the largest of the Indian states, covering
nearly 30,000 square miles, with a population of almost five million
persons, governed by a prince who was to be saluted with the maxi-
mum number of guns, and who therefore was reckoned, in spite of his
curtailed authority, on the same level of dignity as princes far less
restricted by treaty provisions. The rendition of Mysore is thus an
outstanding example of the manner in which the crown's disavowal
of any annexationist policy has been observed, even where territory
had been for nearly two generations under British control; but it also
affords the most striking instance on record of the contrast between
the views of the crown and those of the Company of what should be
the status of the Indian princes.
To this most important aspect of the present subject we must shortly
return. But it should be noted that other points of general policy are
^ Sketch of the History of Indian 1858-19 18, pp. lygsqq.
RENDITION OF MYSORE 503
well illustrated by the instrument of transfer. Of these telegraph and
railway development is one of the most important. Articles 14 and 15
provide for the free grant of all land needed by the Government of
India for these purposes, for the inclusion in the British telegraph
system of all telegraph lines that may be constructed, for their working
(in the absence of special agreement) by the Briush telegraph depart-
ment, for the exercise of plenary jurisdiction within all land made
over for railway construction. These provisions correspond with the
terms of special agreements made with a number of other states, and
represent the policy of developing these services throughout India as
a whole. In a like manner article 18 proscribes any action affecting
the salt and opium monopolies of the Government of India without its
assent. In the matter of salt Lytton concluded important agreements
with the Rajput states for the acquisition of the main sources of salt
in India, ^ while the general policy of restricting exports of opium,
first accepted by the government of Lord MintOj has obviously affected
the revenues of the opium-producing states.
These points have a special interest of their own. They illustrate
the growth of a community of interests in India as a whole, reflected
in the field of policy by the appearance of that tendency which Lee-
Warner aptly described as "subordinate co-operation". While com-
munications remained in their mediaeval condition, the resultant
limitation of trade and intercourse hindered the development of
common interests. It was possible still to regard the interests of in-
dividual states and of British India itself as little interdependent, and
consequently to adopt towards the states the former policy (again to
quote Lee-Warner) of " subordinate isolation". As time passed, and
the influence of developing communications became more evident,
this became more and more impracticable. A uniform railway and
telegraph system, for example, would manifestly be more beneficial,
not only to British India, but also to the states, than a variety of
gauges, rates, and regulations. Such ideas inevitably tended to carry
the conception of paramountcy beyond the political into the economic
sphere, and the uniformity achieved in the new economic relations
reacted upon the diversity of the old political relations.
Between 1858 and 1906 there were then numerous causes at work
tending (in defiance of all confirmations) to hasten the decay of the
Company's treaties. The establishment of personal relations with the
crown, the rising standards of administrative propriety, the growth of
common economic interests, multiplied points of contact, occasions
of influence, opportunities oif interference, the scope of control; while
the guarantees against the old danger of annexation disposed the
princes to acquiesce in this development of policy and so to enlarge
the extra-diplomatic element in the paramountcy of the crown.
Hence arose the tendency (within limits which it is hardly possible at
1 Cf. Aitchison, op. cit. m, 189.
504 RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT WITH STATES
present to define) to ignore treaty stipulations where important con-
siderations were deemed to be at stake. This operated, seldom by way
of any formal breach of treaty rights, but by assuming authority
nowhere granted by treaty, or by extending authority admitted by
treaty in one state to others which had not accepted such conditions.
A series of rules began to appear by which the Foreign Department
invariably determined certain questions. The absence of princes from
their states offers an illustration of this tendency. A custom had
sprung up for Indian princes, desirous of travelling beyond the limits
of their states, especially to Europe, to seek the approval of the govern-
ment. This had originated naturally enough in the clauses precluding
them from entering into any relations with another state save through
the agency of the Government of India. Some, however, began to form
a habit of residing for long periods of time in London and other
European capitals, where their occupations, if free from political
taint, were liable to criticism on other grounds. To Gurzon, "who took
to government as other men take to pleasure",^ this neglect of their
duty seemed an intolerable offence. He therefore issued a circular,
which found its way into the newspapers, laying down the views of
government.
"Repeated absences from India of Native Chiefs", he observed, "should be
regarded as a dereliction and not as a discharge of public duty . . . the visits of
such princes and chiefs to Europe should only meet with encouragement in cases
where . . . benefit will result from the trip both to the chief and to his people . . .
where such permission is . . . granted, ... it should be understood that so far from
constituting a ground for the early renewal of the request, it is a reason against
it ; and ... a suitable interval should elapse between the return from travel and
a fresh application for leave." ^
There had, in fact, been imported into the relations with the Indian
states a moral factor alongside of the old political considerations.
Gurzon's speech at Gwalior in 1 899 voices this in no uncertain manner.
"The native chief", he said, "has become by our policy an integral factor in
the imperial organisation of India. He is concerned not less than the viceroy
or the lieutenant-governor in the administration of the country. I claim him as
my colleague and partner. He cannot remain vis a vis of the empire a loyal subject
of Her Majesty the Queen Empress, and vis d vis of his own people a frivolous
or irresponsible despot. He must justify and not abuse the authority committed
to him; he must be the servant as well as the master of his people."'
It is significant that this declaration of administrative morality
should have coincided with a marked inclination to tighten the reins
of control. Much as seventy years earlier the Gompany's aversion to
annexation yielded before the reflection that the extension of British
rule would mean also the extension of educational and missionary
influences, so in 1899 the duty of securing an improved administra-
* Tfu Times, 3 1 January, 1 92 1 .
* Ronaldshay, Life of Curzon, n, 91.
* Raleigh, Curzon in India, p. 217.
CURZON'S POLICY 505
tion in the Indian states had come to outweigh the duty of observing
the letter of treaties framed in eadier days. A new attitude had indeed
come into vogue. The Foreign Department came to stress certain
provisions of certain treaties, to lay emphasis upon the conditions
imposed on certain states, to regard what had been done in one state
as a good precedent for what in like circumstances might be done in
any of the others. Nor did the practice invariably work to the dis-
advantage of the states. Down to the close of the nineteenth century,
for instance, there had lingered on queer survivals of oriental diplo-
matic custom. An agent sent publicly by one state to another had
ever been housed and clothed, fed and paid, at the expense of the state
which received him. The practice, perhaps, originated partly in the
oriental traditions of unlimited hospitality, partly in the universal
claims of Eastern kings who never willingly acknowledged any other
temporal dominion than their own and little liked the sight of those
whom they could not regard as their own servants. This tradition had
been accepted by the Company's government when it first entered
into close relations with Indian princes ; it had maintained the vakils
whom the Bonsla, or the nawab wazir, kept at Calcutta, and had
suffered the princes to pay allowances to the residents whom it sent
to them. This no doubt explains the immense popularity enjoyed by
the political service among the Company's servants of the period. The
revolution in the Company's position transformed this primitive
system of relations. Gradually the princes' vakils ceased to be received
at the headquarters of the government, and the Company's residents
depended on the salaries of the government that employed them. But
a number of advantages of various kinds and varying amounts — known
technically as "easements" — had continued; and just as Curzon laid
down rules regarding visits to Europe, so also in this matter of political
perquisites. In fact the relations with the princes were being regu-
larised, while the principle of "reading all Indian treaties together ",i
so as to produce something like a coherent body of rules, strengthened
the process. This was definitely laid down by Curzon in his speech at
Bahawalpur in 1903. The ties between the Indian princes and the
British crown, he then said,
have no parallel in any other country of the world. The political system of India
is neither feudalism nor federation ; it is embodied in no constitution ; it does not
alvvays rest upon a treaty; it bears no resemblance to a league. It represents a
series of relationships that have grown up between the crown and the Indian
princes under widely differing historical conditions, but which in process of time
have gradually conformed to a single type.^
This certainly represents the practice of the Foreign Department
under Curzon's vigorous, if unwise, control. The objections on the
part of the Indian states are evident enough, for the policy casts doubt
upon the validity of individual treaties. Yet in the circumstances of
^ Lee-Warner, op. cit. p. 256. 2 Raleigh, op. cit. p. 226.
5o6 RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT WITH STATES
the case it would have been singularly difficult to avoid. Almost all
the treaties belonged to a world which had completely passed away,
and in which the Company's predominance had been new, uncertain,
questioned. They no longer corresponded with the political facts, and
some general rules of conduct towards the Indian states were indis-
pensable. Even Sir Leslie Scott found himself unable to avoid general
formulas for which assuredly no universal treaty obligations can be
found. "The rights and duties arising from paramountcy", he says,
*' are uniform throughout India." ^ He elsewhere defines paramountcy
as arising "out of the agreed cession of. . . attributes of sovereignty".*
Yet there are numerous small states that have never formally made
any such cession. They are, it seems, bound by the cessions that other
states have made. And yet, if for instance the little state of Janjira is
bound by the cessions made by Hyderabad, why is Hyderabad not
bound by the cessions made by Mysore? The fact seems to be that
constructive interpretations and practice based on use and sufferance
could not be excluded from a consideration of the princes' rights and
duties, nor could any real limit be set to their application beyond the
line drawn at any moment by political expediency, failing that general
revision of the treaties which is still awaited.
Certainly no one considering the general course of events within
the period covered by this chapter can deny that political expediency
has materially affected the attitude of both parties, of the Government
of India on the one side and of the states on the other, towards the
question of treaty rights. In general down to 1906 the governors-
general were steadily inclining more and more towards basing their
policy on the maxims of general philanthropy, while their unquestioned
power disposed them in the name of duty constandy to raise the limits
of the expedient. At the same time through most of the period the
princes were equally inclined to acquiesce. They had gained too much
by the abandonment of annexation to oppose the accompanying
growth of paramountcy. It was not until the close of the century that
regulations such as Curzon's rules about visits to Europe excited their
active opposition. Then, indeed, they began to question the validity of
much that had been done, and to consider how much of it might be
reversed. At almost the same moment the attitude of the Government
of India began to change. The explanation lies less in any belated
recognition of the princes' rights than in the fact that political move-
ments within British India itself were beginning to dispute the right
and authority by which India was governed. Assailed by the intelli-
gentsia, the government looked round naturally for allies and helpers.
In 1 857 the princes had in general aided to resist the tide of the Mudny.
In 1907 they might aid to slacken the onslaught of polidcal unrest.
They were therefore to be cultivated rather than coerced. Seeing
their rising value, the princes raised their demands, but not too much,
* ButUr ComnutUe Report, p. 70. ' Idem, p. 64.
IMPERIAL SERVICE TROOPS 507
for they also were threatened by the same forces that the Government
of India was seeking to dam back into constitutional channels. A new
tendency had come into operation.
It is illustrated by two very remarkable developments, both of which
may be traced back into the pre-Gurzonian period. One is represented
by the imperial service troops, the other by the abandonment of the
century-old policy of the isolation of individual states. The distrust or
dislike with which the state forces had been regarded has already been
pointed out. Save for a brief period during the Mutiny, few governors-
general had regarded the states, in their military aspect, save as
potential, if unlikely, enemies. Even at the beginning of the twentieth
century Kitchener's internal defence scheme took them into account
as a source of possible danger.^ This, however, was more the survival
of tradition than the policy advocated by the Foreign Department.
The Panjdeh war scare in 1885 had elicited a number of offers from
the Indian states, especially from those near the North-West Frontier,
of troops for service against Russia if need should arise. General
military opinion was averse to anything of the kind. But the secretary
of the Foreign Department, Mortimer Durand, strongly favoured the
idea of utilising the state forces. He discussed it with the lieutenant-
governor of the Panjab, with the governor-general. Lord Dufferin,
with the commander-in-chief. Lord (then Sir Frederick) Roberts.^
The upshot was the formation of the imperial service troops. These
were bodies of men entirely under the control of the states which
maintained them, trained under British officers specially lent for the
purpose, and never under the orders of the commander-in-chief except
when on active service. The first occasion of their employment was
the Hunza campaign of 1893. They were differentiated from the
contingents of earlier days by the voluntary nature of their main-
tenance, by their being entirely under Indian control and commanded
by Indian officers, and by their recognition depending on their
being kept up to an effective standard, always ready for service
whenever called for. In 19 14 they were 22,000 strong, maintained by
twenty-nine of the states. In 1923 they had risen to 27,000.^ This
represents, as Lee-Warner points out, the complete antithesis of
Wellesley's policy of holding the Indian states in check by the bit and
bridle of subsidiary forces.^ It even affords a notable contrast with
the policy which had warned Sindhia in 1867 to disperse his favourite
"toy".
The other development was at least equally significant. The com-
monest clause in the treaties had been that which forbade the states
to enter into relations with each other or with any external power save
^ Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, ii, 135.
2 Sykes, Life of Sir Mortimer Durand, p. 172.
^ The Army in In^ia and its evolution, pp. 156-7.
* Lee-Warner, op. cit. p. 185.
5o8 RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT WITH STATES
through the medium of the Company's government. The constant
repetition of the clause had marked the importance which was attached
to it. It had been the corner-stone of the Company's policy, and for
many years it remained equally important in the eyes of the repre-
sentatives of the crown. It was deemed essential to keep the states
isolated one from another. Lytton was the first governor-general to
propose the abandonment of these views. It is noteworthy that he was
also the first governor-general to attempt to regulate the vernacular
press. In one of those moments of true insight which from time to
time visited him, he wrote to Lord Salisbury,
I am convinced that the fundamental political mistake of able and experienced
Indian officials is a belief that we can hold India securely by what they call good
government. . . . Look at the mistake which Austria made in the government of
her Italian provinces. They were the best governed portions of Italy; she studied
and protected the interests of the native peasantry; but, fearing the native noblesse ^
she snubbed and repressed it. ... ^
He was exceedingly anxious, therefore, to transform the relations
between the states and the Government of India. With this end in view
he pressed for leave to announce, at the durbar in which the queen
was to be proclaimed the Qjaeen Empress, the establishment of an
Indian privy council. This was to be limited, at first at all events, to
the great chiefs, who were to consult with and advise the governor-
general on matters of common interest. But the opposition of the
home authorities proved too strong, and the proposal was cut down
to the bestowal of an empty title, "Councillors of the Empress", on
some of the leading princes. ^ The effect of Lytton's proposals, had
they been carried into effect, would have been the establishment of
co-operation, not only between the Government of India and the
states individually, but also between the states collectively. This novel
idea, as yet unsupported by the evident development of danger from
within, would, it was still feared, give rise to common understandings
and united pressure such as might embarrass the Government of India.
In fact it was regarded with the same doleful apprehension as that
with which forty years later distinguished publicists regarded the
creation of the chamber of princes.^
No further step in this direction was taken till the government of
Lord Minto. By then the Indian situation was much more favourable
to a move, for political unrest had reached the point at which it could
not be mistaken. The governor-general consulted the leading states
concerning the spread of anarchist conspiracies; and his reform pro-
posals included the revival of something like Lytton's earlier scheme.
But again the project fell through, largely because in Morley's doc-
trinaire view the only effective remedy for the situation lay in political
concessions.
^ Lady Betty Balfour, Lytton's Indian Administration, p. 109.
* Idem, p. III.
' Sir Valentine Chirol, ap. The TimeSf 10 February, 1921.
MINTO'S POLICY 509
The outbreak of war with Germany, however, displayed so strongly
the decision with which the princes held to their position in the British
Empire, that the adoption of the new policy was at last assured.
Lord Hardinge "initiated conferences with the ruling princes on
matters of imperial interest and on matters affecting the states as a
whole ".^ The joint report of Mr Edwin Montagu and Lord Chelms-
ford recommended the establishment of a Chamber of Princes, and
the formation of machinery for joint consultation between the governor-
general and the Indian states on matters of common interest. In 1921
the chamber was inaugurated, bringing to an end a prolonged and
most important phase of the relations between the states and the
Government of India.
The best exposition of the attitude of the governors-general within
the later and formative part of the period is contained in the speech
which Lord Minto delivered at Udaipur in 1909. He fully renounced
the tendency which the practice of the Foreign Department had
exhibited down to the government of Lord Curzon.
"I have. . .made it a rule", he declared, "to avoid as far as possible the issue
of general instructions, and have endeavoured to deal with questions as they
arose with reference to existing treaties, the merits of each case, local conditions,
antecedent circumstances, and the particular stage of development, feudal and
constitutional, of individual principalities."^
This "more sympathetic and therefore more elastic policy" ad-
mitted the existence of more than one type of relationship. Yet Lord
Minto, too, recognised and declared the suzerainty of the crown as
existent quite apart from treaty obligation. "The imperial govern-
ment", he said, "has assumed a certain degree of responsibility for
the general soundness of [the princes'] administration and would not
consent to incur the reproach of being an indirect instrument of mis-
rule." He maintained the need of interpreting the treaties in the light
of actual fact, of established usage, and indeed of political expediency,
but he drew the line of political expediency far below the level to
which it had been forced by his predecessors. His attitude closely
agrees with that of Lord Reading in 1922.^
Throughout the whole period, then, neither the claims of the crown
nor the claims of the princes have really depended on the exact
wording of the treaties. Both have fluctuated with the circumstances
of the time. The crown, in two most important points, has receded from
claims which it might have exercised. It has renounced annexation;
it has forgone its right to deal in no other way than individually with
the states. But, as against this, the states have become what they never
were by treaty, parts of an empire. The problem has become con-
stitutional rather than diplomatic. The suzerainty of the crown has
^ Butler Committee Report, p. 20.
2 Buchan, Life of Lord Minto, p. 298.
3 ParL Papers, 1926, G. 2621, p. 19.
510 RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT WITH STATES
become by the weight of its power greater than the Company's para-
mountcy ever was. But this process has gone on unsupported by
any formal recognition. The contrast between the poUtical facts and
any theory which both parties would agree to draw from the docu-
ments has become more pronounced. Under the pressure of this
suzerainty the administration of the states has been improved and the
position of the princes in a world of change been greatly strengthened.
But this has been achieved by an illogical expansion of political right
by that sense of moral duty which has been at once the strength and
weakness, the inspiration and obsession, of modern British rule in
India.
CHAPTER XXVIII
LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
JLHE story of local self-government in British India reveals a long-
drawn-out effort to retain what was good in existing institutions and
to reinforce these wherever necessary by ideas which had been proved
to be useful in England. As India was and is essentially a country of
villages, places where, thanks to the space and air available and the
cleansing power of the Indian sun and rains, disease in normal circum-
stances remained within reasonable bounds, the indigenous village
customs were left undisturbed, but for congested areas like towns it
was soon necessary to bring in the system of the West. Local self-
government was imported from England and bestowed as a gift, first
on the three presidency towns and later on the district towns, while
the villages were allowed to retain their ancient customs. Yet it is in
these villages, where the great mass of the people live, that there has
existed for centuries a simple system of local self-government on which
all real advance must be based. As the Decentralisation Commission
has said in its report:
The foundation of any stable edifice which shall associate the people with the
administration, must be the village, as being an area of much greater antiquity
than the administrative creations such as tahsils, and one in which people are
known to one another and have interests which converge on well-recognised
objects.^
Unfortunately, owing to the general political unsettlement which
preceded the establishment of British rule in India, there had been
a great decay in the life of the village community so that often it was
hard to discern and call to life the various members of what had been
an organic whole. The following pages will show the efforts to utilise
what was left, for it was the business and policy of the government
" to leave as much as possible of the business of the country to be done
by the people themselves ".^
The conditions of life in the towns, however, called for the early
application of English methods of administration, and many attempts
were made to transplant English municipal life into India. But, since
this system was not an indigenous growth but a forced plant of foreign
importation, it developed in India not like the English local govern-
ment but somewhat like that in France, with local authorities looking
rather to the wishes of the central authority than to what was desired
by the local people and with the conduct of local affairs in the hands
^ Report, p. Q39.
2 Resolution of Lord Lawrence, 14 September, 1864.
512 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
of officials criticised and advised by local inhabitants rather than in
the hands of elected representatives of the locality advised and helped
by permanent officials who were their servants. Such a development
was naturally disliked by the British government in England and by
British officials in India, who often attempted to breed a munici-
pal system like that known in England. These did not meet with any
great success, partly because the English system was not suited to the
situation in the country and partly because officials in India did not
realise the real nature of government control in England.
The subject of local self-government in India naturally divides
itself into two main sections, rural and urban. Each section, again, has
two divisions which demand separate treatment. In the rural area
the administration of the villages with their indigenous local self-
government stands apart from that of the rural district, while among
the towns the presidency towns of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras
have a history quite distinct from that of the others.
Villages
The following description of an Indian village taken from the
Imperial Gazetteer gives a picture which is true for large parts of India. ^
The typical Indian village has its central residential site, with an open space
for a pond or cattle stand. Stretching around this nucleus lie the village lands,
consisting of a cultivated area and (very often) grounds for grazing and wood
cutting. The arable lands have their several boundary marks and their little sub-
divisions of earth ridges made for retaining rain or irrigation water. The in-
habitants of such a village pass their life in the midst of these simple surroundings,
welded together in a little community with its own organisation and government,
which differ in character in the various types of villages, its body of customary
rules, and its little staff of functionaries, artisans and traders.
Such a description is not true of certain parts of India such as Bengal
and Assam, and, even where it may be generally true, there is such
an infinite variety of exceptions that the general application of a
statement must be made and received with the greatest caution.
The chief functionaries were the headman, the accountant, the
watchman, the priest and the schoolmaster, while the artisans included
among others the smith, the potter and the washerman. The final
word in the internal affairs of the village lay with the village council
or panchayat, which settled matters by discussion carried on until
general agreement was reached. The idea that the will of the majority
should prevail or that votes should be taken does not appear to have
existed. 2 Formerly the village officers and artisans were paid by
grants of land or a share of the produce, but during Muhammadan
rule, especially in its later phases, the village community greatly
decayed and the remuneration of both officers and artisans, where
* Imperial Gazetteer, iv, 279.
* Matthai, Village Government in British India, p. 30.
VILLAGES 513
these remained, largely took the form of cash payments. Sometimes
the village council had disappeared, and in many places little trace of it
could be found. Not that the rulers interfered with village life directly,
for the relation between ruler and village was purely fiscal. So long
as the revenue was paid to the proper official the villages were left to
themselves. There was, however, in the exaction of all the revenue
and perquisites that could be taken from the country, a tremendous
pressure on the peasants which led to the decadence of village life.^
Accordingly the British administrators had not to deal with a network
of flourishing villages each with a healthy local life, but only with the
remnants of the former system. Such as they were these remnants
were utilised as the foundation of the new rule. Under settled and
peaceful conditions, village life assumed a more normal course, and,
as knowledge was gained with experience, many efforts were made to
revive what was useful in the old village life with reference to educa-
tion, sanitation, watch and ward, administration of justice and poor
relief In 1814 the court of directors of the East India Company
wrote:
We refer with particular satisfaction upon this occasion to that distinguished
feature of internal polity which prevails in some parts of India, and by which the
instruction of the people is provided for by a certain charge upon the produce
of the soil and by other endowments in favour of the village teachers, who are
thereby rendered public servants of the community.^
They urged the government to protect and support these teachers. Sir
Thomas Munro, protesting in 1824 against the proposal to absorb the
village watch of Madras into the regular police, wrote: "No system
for any part of the municipal administration can ever answer that is
not drawn from the ancient institutions or assimilated with them".^
In 1 82 1 Elphinstone in the Bombay Presidency declared: "Our
principal instrument must continue to be the panchayat and that must
continue to be exempt from all new forms, interference and regula-
tions on our part".^ Such was the policy laid down at the beginning
of the nineteenth century and followed by later administrators. The
procedure may be illustrated by describing the organisation of the
village watch and ward, an ever-present necessity, and the utilisation
of the village system for special poor relief necessitated every now and
then by the failure of proper rains.
The three original factors of village police organisation were the
headman, the village watchman and the general body of villagers,
all of whom are still utilised for the preservation of law and order. In
Madras the village headman "must maintain law and order in his
village, applying for assistance to higher authorities, if necessary, and
1 Moreland, The Agrarian System of Moslem India ^ chap. viii.
2 Howell, Education in British India, p. 6.
* Matthai, op. cit. p. 141. * Idem, p. 168.
C H I VI 33
514 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
reporting to them the occurrence of crimes and the movement of
criminal gangs''.^ In Bombay the police patel or headman has
like duties to perform, while in the Panjab and the United Provinces
for the reporting of crime use is made of the lambardar or representative
of the landlords of the village. The administrative reports of Burma
commend the police work done not only by the village headmen but
also by their wives, one of whom arrested an armed robber in her
husband's absence. The watchman was in olden times practically a
servant of the headman, usually belonging to one of the menial castes,
who lived on the outskirts of the village, and performed general
service for the community. The importance of his services and position
has been continually recognised by British officials from Lord
Hastings who in i8i 5 described them as *' the foundation of all possible
police in the country ",2 right up to the present time. The Police
Commission of 1902-3 emphasised the necessity of maintaining the
village watch as part of the village system.^
It is necessary also from the people's point of view; even if the expensive establish-
ment required could be maintained, it would be vexatious and intolerable to the
people. Constant interference by the police, constant espionage of village life,
constant visits of officials of the lowest grades constitute an intolerable burden
to the people.
In spite of frequent attempts on the part of the regular police to get
these watchmen entirely under their control, the policy of the govern-
ment has been, while making them work in harmony with the regular
police, to preserve their connection with the headmen by making
them responsible to the district magistrate through that functionary.
They are paid either by monthly salaries or by the old custom of
assignments of land and grain-fees, and in making new appointments
to this service hereditary claims are always respected. In Bengal
where village headmen did not exist and where the village watchman
was either a servant of the landlord or under the control of the regular
police, continual efforts have been made since 1870 to create a local
village council to collect the pay of the village watchmen and to
control them as village servants. The scheme at first met with little
success, as the council members objected to being responsible for the
pay, and the regular police found that they could get no help from
either council or watchman. Changes were made in the law to give
the magistrate and police more control, but with little improvement
to the system, until finally in 191 9 the Village Self-Government Act
gave the council a proper status and dignity and definitely placed the
village watchman in a position subordinate to that authority. Apart
from the headman and the village watchman, whose duties are pre-
scribed by statute, the general body of villagers at times show them-
selves ready for special organised efforts. This readiness has been
utilised by the regular police to form effective bodies to repel the
^ Imperial Gazetteer , iv, 281. ' Matthai, op. cit. p. 141. ' Commission Report, chap. iii.
i
VILLAGES 515
attacks of bands of robbers. Such village defence parties have func-
tioned in most provinces and proved especially useful in Bengal in
combating and capturing robbers, even when armed with firearms.
The relief of the poor has in normal circumstances been left mainly
to individual charity, which in India is accepted as one of the principal
duties of ordinary people. So universal is the acceptance of this duty
that ordinarily there has not arisen the necessity for state relief of the
poor which is so common a feature of Western countries. At times,
however, owing to the failure of the rains on which the harvests
depend, large masses of the population are faced with unemployment
and there is a sudden and great contraction of private charity. It is
now the accepted policy of the state to intervene to save the people
from starvation and at the same time to preserve in them to the fullest
possible extent the spirit of self-help. This policy has elaborated a
series of famine codes, the product of successive commissions of enquiry
to report on the results of previous famines and to formulate definite
suggestions for prevention and relief "There are few things in the
history of Indian administration during the last thirty years in which
the growth of scientific knowledge and the power of organisation have
achieved a more conspicuous success than the prevention and relief
of famines."^ Such famines as do now occur are very different from
those mentioned in the chronicles of the seventeenth century which
were food famines in the strictest sense of the word, times when it was
not a question of obtaining the means to pay for food but of getting
food for all; famines accompanied by huge mortality and voluntary
enslavement of the people. ^ At the present day, thanks to the excellent
communications both within India and connecting her with the rest
of the world, the very idea of a food famine has been banished from
all but a few tracts still inaccessible to the merchant. It is necessary,
however, to help large masses of individuals in want, and the old
village organisation is employed to relieve distress throughout the area
affected by the failure of crops. Famine relief is given in villages by
distributing doles of grain, cooked food or money to poor persons
unable to work or by giving wages in payment of work done on village
relief works. For the administration of this relief a village council or
panchayat is appointed, while full use is made of the headman, ac-
countant, and watchman of the village. To these is added the village
grain-dealer who is all-important as the local purveyor. Although in
his capacity as money-lender this individual has been fiercely attacked
in all ages, yet as the local storer of grain and the middleman between
the producer and consumer, he is now recognised as one of the
principal combatants of famine whose services should be enlisted by
the state. The headman, aided by the village council, prepares the
list of those eligible for gratuitous relief, while usually some of them
^ Matthai, op. cit. p. 74-
2 Moreland, From Akbar to Aurangzeb, chap. vii.
33-2
5i6 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
form the agency under which village relief works are carried out. The
accountant keeps systematic records of the persons relieved or em-
ployed, while the watchman informs the needy where food or work
may be had and helps to bring in cases too weak to walk. All through
the period they are supervised, corrected and encouraged by the
government official placed in charge of a circle of many villages, and
under his leadership they have made it possible to give wide and
economical distribution of state aid in times of famine.
Similar methods have been adopted to utilise the old village
machinery for the extension of primary education and the dispensing
of justice, but the illustrations given above will suffice to show how
efforts have been made to utilise the self-government that was in-
digenous in the country. When the sphere of administration was
enlarged from the village to the district, a new departure had to be
made. Except in the collection of revenue there was nothing in the
old system by which the villages were linked up with the higher
authorities. New construction, not an adaptation of the old, was
necessary. For district self-government ideas were imported, ideas
with which the administrators had been familiar in their own country,
and it was hoped that equal good would result from their planting in
an Indian soil.
Rural Boards
The present system of rural boards throughout India is the result
of the resolution of Lord Ripon's government of i8 May, 1882, which
was worked out and applied in various ways by the different pro-
vincial governments in India. Such diversity, a natural consequence
of the great differences in the peoples and countries of India, was
accentuated by the necessity of utilising as far as possible the organisa-
tion that already existed for carrying on the various works of local
government, such as the construction and maintenance of roads,
village education, etc. Such work, as is usual in India, had been started
without legislation. In Bengal money was raised by regulations^ which
decreed that public ferries should be managed by the government for
the safety and convenience of travellers, and that surplus proceeds
should be used for the repair and construction of roads, bridges and
drains. Local committees were appointed, with the district magistrate
as secretary, to advise the government of the needs of each district and
to see that the money allotted was spent properly. Although these
committees had no legal power to raise funds, and their work was in
strict subordination to the local government, they were of considerable
use, not only in helping the local officials to realise what roads were
of prime importance, but also in persuading the local gentry to
subscribe for particular pieces of work. The funds available were so
small, less than ^£'50,000 in 1886 for 200,000 square miles of country,
^ Regulation xix of 1816 and vi of 1819.
RURAL BOARDS 517
that we find the government urging the committees to encourage local
subscriptions in aid of the work.^ In other parts of India money was
raised usually by a cess, a small percentage of the land-revenue levied
or paid voluntarily for expenditure on roads and education, this being
the easiest and traditional way of getting any extra money required.
The amounts to be paid were fixed when an assessment of land-
revenue was settled, and, so long as they were used for obvious local
improvements, these levies met with little opposition. In nearly all
cases local committees were appointed, consisting of both officials and
private persons, English and Indian, to help the district officer in
distributing expenditure throughout the area. The needs of various
parts were discussed and the money allotted. It was a type of local
government suited to the conditions of the time that responsibility
should rest on the district magistrate, who got others, interested in the
needs of the district, to help him in the work.
In Madras and Sind^ proceedings were soon taken to legalise these
cesses and later in 1 869 the Bombay Government was armed with a
comprehensive enactment^ to provide for expenditure on objects of
local public utility and to constitute committees for the proper ad-
ministration of such funds. These bodies were formed not only for the
district as a whole, but also for the taluks or subdivisions of the district,
considerable sums being placed at the disposal of all these bodies. By
the formation of local committees it was hoped that the people might
become accustomed to take an interest in the administration of their
own affairs and give that assistance of which the government stood so
much in need in regulating and providing for local requirements and
improvements. The director of public instruction had reported that
the educational inspectors continued to make the most encouraging
reports of the working of the local cess, and thought he saw his way
to give primary education to the children of the cultivators.^ All the
members of the committees were nominated with the local officials
at their head while their proceedings were subject to review and
control by the government. Local self-government had been put on a
definite footing, not like that in England, but rather akin to that on
the continent of Europe in its strict control by officials.
The next phase was inaugurated by the financial reforms of Lord
Mayo in 1870, whereby each province was to bear a part of the growing
state expenditure, and the need for organising local self-government
was clearly laid down in the resolution of 14 September, 1870.
The operation of this resolution in its full meaning and integrity will afford
opportunities for the development of self-government, for strengthening municipal
institutions, and for the association of natives and Europeans to a greater extent
than heretofore in the administration of affairs.
^ Ferry Fund Resolution, 12 September, 1856.
2 Act VI of 1863 (Madras Council), VIII of 1865 (Bombay Council).
3 Act III of 1869 (Bombay Council).
* Proceedings, Bombay Legis. Council, 5 February, 1869.
5i8 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
Within the next year there was great activity in the various provinces
to place local government on a proper local footing, acts^ being
passed which legalised existing cesses, adding to them in some cases
and in Bengal even bringing them into existence. As Bengal had so
far escaped all cesses, it raised a cry of indignation at the proposal thus
to raise funds for roads and education. So great was this that the
secretary of state directed^ that the cess should raise only what was
needed for roads and thus a great opportunity for finding funds for
primary education was lost. Even so there were protests^ by Indian
members of the legislative council that no more roads were necessary,
although the famine in Orissa had recently shown the absolute
necessity of extending the means of moving food from one part of the
country to another. The result was that the proceeds of the cess could
be utilised only for roads, while in the other provinces expenditure
was distributed over communications, education, public health, and
general improvements in the districts. Committees similar in con-
stitution to those in the Bombay Presidency were formed for the
districts throughout India, but nothing was done to develop self-
government in smaller areas. There was thus by 1881 throughout
British India (except Burma) local government by nominated district
committees, consisting both of officials and private persons, controlled
in all matters by the government and with an official president or chair-
man. Much was done by these bodies to improve communications,
construct schools, dispensaries, etc., and the districts reaped con-
siderable benefit. The system, however, had no connection with any
previous Indian system of administration, but was the work of official
hands. Local funds were raised to supplement what was given by the
central government, and proceedings were controlled by persons who
looked to that government for orders rather than seeking to carry out
the wishes of the people of the district. The vitality of such bodies
depended almost entirely on the officials who, although in a minority
on the committees, practically controlled their proceedings. In
co-operation with these officials private persons in several instances
did excellent work but in many cases meetings were poorly attended,
and the administration of affairs rested with the district officer aided
by his official staff. The hope of relieving that officer in his work of
local administration had not been fulfilled, while the extra funds
available had greatly increased the scope of his activities.
In 1 88 1-2 a determined effort was made to turn these district
committees into something more consonant with English ideas. It
was proposed at first that the local administration should be concen-
trated in the hands of one committee for each district with subordinate
committees for the subdivisions, the district or subdivisional officer
1 XVII, XVIII, XX of 1871, IV of 1871 (Madras).
* Proceedings, Bengal Legis. Council, 25 March, 1871.
* Ideniy 3 June, 1871.
RURAL BOARDS 519
presiding and being responsible for the executive side of the work. At
least one-half of the members of these committees were to be private
persons nominated or elected as might seem best. This did not repre-
sent much advance on the state of affairs then existing, but by the
resolution of May, 1882, a further step was made towards more liberal
ideas, and it was recognised that the districts were too large for
effective supervision by private persons. It was suggested that the
new boards should have a large preponderance of non-official mem-
bers, chosen wherever practicable by some system of election, and
where possible the chairmanship and control of the executive should
vest in the hands of private persons and not of government officials.
It was desired that the smallest administrative unit — the subdivision
— should ordinarily form the maximum area to be placed under a
local board. The jurisdiction of the primary boards was to be so
limited in area as to ensure both local knowledge and local interest
on the part of each of the members. Internal control by officials over
the boards was to be relaxed, but outside control was to be main-
tained by requiring sanction for certain actions and by retaining the
power of intervention in case of neglect or default, this power ex-
tending in the last resort to the suspension of the delinquent board.
It is curious and significant that control by an auditor empowered to
surcharge was not mentioned, although this had been definitely
provided in the English Public Health Act of 1875 (s. 248).
The legislation that followed in the train of this resolution showed
the greatest diversity with only a partial observance of the instructions
issued. The new proposals were too drastic a change from existing
conditions to be accepted with confidence, and the various provinces,
while acting on the resolution, were nowhere prepared to follow it
completely. All, except Burma, accepted the principle, but all asked
that its fulfilment might be gradual. Some attempts were made to
base the system on the existing indigenous self-government in the
villages, and this at first obtained the fullest support from the higher
authorities. In addressing his council on the Local Rates Bill for the
Central Provinces in November, 1 882, the governor-general remarked :
"I think it very desirable that here as elsewhere, where there may
still remain indigenous institutions of local self-government, that they
should be made use of to the utmost possible extent".^ By this bill
the basic electorate was composed of the village headmen who were
grouped together to elect members to the subordinate local boards
which in their turn elected the majority of the district council.^ The
district officer was carefully excluded from the chairman's office but
the ordinary district remained as the main unit of administration, an
area much too large to be known or even interesting to the private
members of the board, a defect that was to prove fatal to genuine
local self-government on the English model. A little later the same
* Proceedings, India Legis. Council, 2 November, 1882. ' I of 1883.
520 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
council legislating for the Panjab and the North-Western Provinces and
Oudh departed still further from the principle of utilising indigenous
materials and practically retained the system already in vogue in the
provinces, save that a certain elective element was introduced.^ The
district officer remained in charge of the administration of the district
council or board, while the subordinate bodies for the subdivisions
had no independent power, little money to use, and only the most
uninteresting routine work to supervise.
As has been noted above, the Bombay Presidency led the way in
the attempt to stimulate local interest in rural improvement, but,
owing to the necessity of concentrating on the construction of good
roads throughout the districts, administration was completely cen-
tralised and the local bodies had littie if any power over expenditure.^
New legislation, however, in 1884 established again the subdivisional
boards with an electorate somewhat on the lines of that in the Central
Provinces, and placed at their disposal a portion of the cess and certain
fees. The chairmen remained official, but owing to the powers given
to the subordinate boards there was a greater diffusion of work in the
different parts of the districts.^ Madras went a step further on the
path towards decentralisation by taking for its primary boards com-
mittees or panchayats for the larger and more prosperous villages, in
many of which voluntary sanitary associations already existed. The
duties of the panchayats were to clean up the village and in some cases
to maintain roads and provide a water supply. Their funds were
found from a house-rate, which could in the last resort be imposed by
the governor if the villagers themselves insisted on preferring in-
sanitary conditions to the payment of rates.* The subdivisional or
taluk boards were armed with considerable powers and funds, while
the district board exercised administration over the whole district.
There was thus a real association of the people with the work in
connection with communications, education and sanitation at all
stages, but the chairmen of the taluk and district boards remained
official, so that, except in the village unions, executive power re-
mained that of the local government and control was exercised from
within rather than from without.
More striking is the story of the Bengal Local Self-Cxovernment Act,
by which a provincial government started to carry out the principles
of the 1882 resolution but was thwarted by the secretary of state.
Mr Macaulay in introducing the bill in January, 1883, referred to the
great progress that had been made in the last twelve years in educa-
tion, the making of roads, etc., but admitted that littie had been done
to develop local self-government. The district committees established
1 XIV and XX of 1883.
* Proceedings, Bombay Legis. Council, 25 August, 1883.
* Act I of 1884 (Bombay Council).
* Act V of 1884 (Madras Council).
RURAL BOARDS 521
in 1871 had not proved satisfactory, as the areas were too large for
such bodies to manage. It was therefore proposed to utihse to
the utmost existing and well-estabhshed institutions and base local
self-government on village committees which would form the
"executive hands " of a local board constituted for an area not greater
than a subdivision. He urged that there was no necessity for a district
board, but the necessary supervision could be provided by a central
board for the whole of Bengal. ^ While the sanction of the secretary
of state to these proposals was awaited, some test elections for village
committees were held, and found to give excellent results, as the mode
of election, viz. calling the villagers together and letting them choose
their own representatives after discussion and not by silent votes,
suited the genius of the country. These interesting and bold proposals,
however, were vetoed by the secretary of state, who desired that the
powers of control should be conferred on a district committee pre-
sided over by the district magistrate.^ Both the local government and
the Government of India urged that the proper position of the magis-
trate as the controlling authority of the district was outside these
boards, and again put up a scheme of subdivisional boards with
control by the divisional commissioner. But the secretary of state
would have none of it and insisted on the establishment of district
boards. He wrote :^
If the plan which I have sketched out were adopted, the government would
be able with due regard to the public interest to leave even more in the hands
of the local bodies than it could with safety when trusting only to the supervision
of the magistrate acting apart and without the advantage of constant intercourse
with the members of a district committee.
The result was the act of 1885 and a system by which the district
magistrate controlled the work throughout the district, the needs of
which were known to him better than to any other member of the
board, as his duties took him all over the countryside. The district
board fulfilled the secretary of state's desire for efficiency, for it was
efficient in getting v/ork done, but there was little if any development
of the English form of local self-government and no utilisation of the
"existing and old institutions in the villages". Great was the change
from the spirit of the 1882 resolution, in which Lord Ripon had
declared:
it is not primarily with a view to improvement in administration that the measure
is put forward and supported. It is chiefly desirable as a measure of political and
popular education. His Excellency in Council has himself no doubt that in course
of time as local knowledge and local interest are brought to bear more freely
on local administration improved efficiency will in fact follow.
These high hopes were hardly justified by the actual working of the
various systems of local government which they had inspired. The
^ Proceedings, Bengal Legis. Council, 20 January, 1883.
2 Ide7n, 9 February, 1884. ^ Idem, 14 March, 1885.
522 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
boards were neither local nor popular, and the machinery of an
election system inspired no enthusiasm. A popular will outside the
village was unknown, and inside was accustomed to find expression
in discussion until a unanimous decision was reached. The hope that
it would be generated by polling booths was disappointed, for the
elected representatives could hardly be said to embody a popular will.
Generally the elections excited little interest and a large proportion
of the vacant seats were filled without contest. Even when sitting on
the board, the representatives of the people were mainly apathetic and
prepared to leave such matters to the disposal of the presiding district
magistrate. Further the districts were units much too large to be
managed by any single representative body. The elected repre-
sentatives knew the immediate vicinity of their respective villages
and the headquarters of the district but were ignorant of the rest of
the area. The subdivision itself was too large an area for an elected
body to manage. The result was that the work of the local bodies was
not spontaneous but actuated by the directing energy and know-
ledge of the district officer who was known to men from all parts of
the district. In the circumstances it was essential that he should
remain in control of these large local bodies, and, even after they had
been working for a quarter of a century, the Decentralisation Com-
mission was of opinion that the district officer should remain at the
head of the board. ^ Even if the outside control of the local bodies had
been increased by giving the auditors, as in England, the power to
surcharge individuals for the misapplication of funds, it is doubtful
whether the services of the district officer could have been dispensed
with, as there was so little vitality in the new bodies.
An example of this lack of vitality may be found in the fact that
these bodies showed little enthusiasm for any attempts to increase
their incomes from those sources which were under their own control,
such as public ferries, cattle-pounds, tolls, etc. The greater part of
their funds came from local cesses assessed and realised by govern-
ment officials. Had it been their duty to collect this money for them-
selves, their income would have been much more attenuated and very
little could have been done to improve life in the districts. As it was,
the district boards, with the exception of those in Madras, kept the
lion's share of the funds for their own work and starved the subordinate
boards, leaving them only enough to carry out works of a petty and
routine nature. It was little wonder that these bodies became com-
pletely apathetic and in most parts of India were condemned as useless.
The contrasting progress of the subdivisional boards armed with
substantial powers and funds, and of the village unions in Madras
realising their own rates, showed clearly that the system elsewhere
was at fault, as it had not been built up from the bottom. A com-
prehensive overhaul was necessary, for the attempt to transplant from
1 Report (1909), para. 795.
PRESIDENCY TOWNS 523
England rural self-government had not been a success. It is now to
be seen how similar efforts fared in connection with the presidency
towns of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras.
Presidency Towns
In the presidency towns the Western ideas of local self-government
have had a comparatively long trial, as they were introduced by a
statute^ of George III which gave authority to the governor-general
to appoint justices of the peace in these towns and empowered these
justices to appoint scavengers and watchmen and to levy a rate to
pay them on owners and occupiers of houses and ground. Earlier
English law was followed, a previous statute ^ of the same monarch
being cited as a precedent. It is significant that although the English
statute is closely followed in constituting the local body, the clause
appointing a person to collect the rates and keep accounts, and pro-
viding punishment in the event of his negligence, is omitted. This
omission to provide for the strict supervision of public money, the
backbone of English local self-government, occurs again and again
in the history of Indian municipal government. It is one of the facts
that help to explain the lack of success in transplanting this English
institution to the soil of an oriental country.
The statute was passed none too soon, for Grandpre could write of
Calcutta in 1 790 that the public drains were regarded as the natural
receptacles for all refuse and filth, that carcasses were left to rot and
putrefy in the streets, and that jackals had for two nights preyed on
a human corpse thrown down at his gate.^ Little change was made
in the next thirty or forty years, but gradually regular establishments
grew up. The body of justices was supposed to control the staflf for
the collection of the rates and an engineer in charge of the roads and
conservancy. In all cases, however, the money collected was inade-
quate for the work to be done and the sanitation of the rapidly growing
presidency towns was indescribably bad.
Between 181 7 and 1830 spasmodic attempts were made in Madras
and Calcutta to undertake special works paid out of the lottery funds,
and much was done with this money in laying out these towns, the
roads or drains on completion being handed over to the justices to
maintain out of their assessments. Even for the maintenance work
the funds never sufficed, and the provincial governments supplied the
balances required. In Bombay alone was an additional tax — that
on carriages and carts — successfully levied, the proceeds of which
were spent on the roads. The justices as a body did not take much
interest in their work, and their power was gradually concentrated
in the hands of the chief magistrate, who was helped in Calcutta by
1 33 Geo. Ill, c. 52. 2 ►, Qeo iii^ c. 42.
3 S. W. Goode, Municipal Calcutta, p. lo.
524 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
the superintendent of police to collect the taxes and to supervise the
work of conservancy — a Herculean task. No trace of popular govern-
ment is apparent, while there was a general fear of imposing taxation
adequate for the work required and of realising rigorously the rates
imposed.
The first comprehensive attempt to tackle the situation was made
by "The Fever Hospital and Municipal Improvement Committee",
which from 1836 to 1849 overhauled all the departments of Calcutta,
laying bare the noisome defects in conservancy, and even extracting
Rs. 14,000 from a highly placed official who could not explain a
deficiency in the accounts. During this period began some efforts to
get the residents to take more interest in the work of the town, as their
co-operation was found essential. Accordingly the acts, XXIV of
1840 for Calcutta and XXII of 1841 for Madras, while widening the
purposes to which the municipal assessment might be applied, gave
powers to the inhabitants of the different divisions of the towns to ask
for the control of the assessment and the collection of taxes. This first
attempt to induce co-operation failed, as the residents had no desire
to participate in the disagreeable tasks of collecting and administering
public funds.
Bombay found its own solution in Act XI of 1845 which concen-
trated the administrative power in the hands of a Conservancy Board,
on which were two European and three Indian justices, elected by
the body of justices, with the senior magistrate of police as chairman.
In Calcutta, however, experiments continued to be made to enlist the
help of the people by direct election, but the elections were a farce
and gave opportunity for the grossest abuses. The result was to dis-
credit completely the elective system for years to come and to put a
stop to the efforts of the government to make the public partners in
the management of the town.
A fresh attempt to grapple with the sanitation of the presidency
towns was made in 1856 when Act XIV (for the conservancy and
improvement of the towns of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay) and
Act XXV (for the better assessment and collection of rates) were
passed. The proceedings of the council show that the various points
in the bills were fully debated, the members always referring to the
English statutes for guidance, but also again and again deferring to
such Indian opinion as was expressed. Some change had to be made,
as it was admitted on all hands that the existing system had failed
and that the election of the commissioners could not be entrusted to
a direct vote. Thus Sir James Colville did not suppose there was any
town in the world of equal size and opulence in such a disgraceful
state of darkness as Calcutta,^ while Mr Peacock emphasised the
importance of drinking water and drainage compared with lighting. ^
* Proceedings, India Legis. Council, 6 December, 1856.
" Idemy 13 December, 1856.
PRESIDENCY TOWNS 525
Special acts were passed for the appointment of three commissioners
in each town and the difference in development of each begins to
appear. In the Calcutta act^ were special provisions for gas-lighting
and for the construction of sewers. In Bombay^ power was given to
levy town-dues, a profitable source of income, while the town was
made to pay part of the cost of the police force and to set aside money
to repay the government the cost of constructing the Vehar waterworks.
For the first time an attempt was made to deal with the conservancy
of the large towns on the lines that had proved successful in England,
but with this fundamental difference that the scheme was not a
natural growth as in England, but an importation, which could be
worked only by the help of officials appointed by the government.
However, many defects soon became evident. For example,
responsibility was divided among the three commissioners ; residents
were not associated in any way with the administration ; there was no
power to raise the necessary funds, while proper audit control was
completely lacking. The towns remained filthy, and the complicated
conservancy system of Act XIV existed only on paper. Each province,
now armed with legislative powers, sought its own solution of the
problem.
In Calcutta the justices were again^ vested with the general control
of municipal expenditure while executive power was concentrated in
the hands of their chairman appointed by the government, his position
being further strengthened by his being commissioner of police.
Provided with funds by the raising of the house- and water-rates. Sir
Stewart Hogg seized the opportunity of taking up on a proper scale the
combined system of drainage and water supply, which made possible
the vast strides in sanitation apparent at this time. But the hundred
and twenty justices formed a clumsy body to supervise a strong and
active commissioner, and there were many wrangles between the two
parties. Still the improvements effected] made them averse to any
constitutional change till ten years later.
Although Bombay had larger available funds than Calcutta, the
three commissioners had been unable to work together and financial
chaos had been the result. There was no check on accounts, no con-
tracts for works, while three and a half lakhs were unaccounted for by
one officer. The condition of the sanitation of the town was dreadful
and the death-rate was rising rapidly. By the act* of 1865 the justices
were constituted a body corporate, with control over the budget, but
all executive power was concentrated in the hands of a highly paid
government official. In view of the financial scandals of the late
regime,''a special controller of accounts was appointed, who was to be
independent of the chairman and whose signature was necessary for
any expenditure. With the appointment of Mr Arthur Crawford as
1 XXVIII of 1856. 2 XXV of 1858.
* VI of 1863 (Bengal Council). * Bombay Municipal Act of 1865.
526 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
municipal commissioner and Dr Hewlett as health officer, the work
of sanitation was pushed on vigorously, and the whole administration
tightened up.
Madras at first did not alter its constitution, as the justices had been
found to take little interest in municipal work, and they could not
afford to appoint a highly paid official as in Bombay. Even with
fresh taxation they could only maintain the existing services and no
drainage scheme could be attempted. Later on, however, legislation^
was passed to associate the people with the administration by dividing
the town into eight wards, with four councillors appointed by the
government for each. Executive power was concentrated in the
hands of the president and fresh sources of income were found in
liquor-licence fees and tolls on goods entering the port.
In the decade 1 865-74 great improvements were made in Calcutta
and Bombay, thanks to the funds available and the vigorous per-
sonalities of the executive heads, but many flaws existed in the con-
stitutions of the towns. Improvements were effected in the legislation
of the next decade, when financial control over the executive was
strengthened and the modern system of election of representatives
directly by ratepayers came at last to stay. In each of the towns half
the councillors were elected, but the executive remained in the hands
of an official nominated by the government. Control over this official
was financial, steps being taken to introduce some sort of continuous
audit or supervision either by paid auditors or by representatives of
the corporation.
A start was made in Bombay, where there had been great popular
agitation against the commissioner on account of his enforcement of
taxation and of pushing on the works necessary for conservancy
without having the full support of the justices. The controller of
expenditure appointed under the act of 1865 did not control,^ as he
had in practice become a subordinate of the commissioner, while the
justices, five hundred in number, were much too numerous to con-
stitute any detailed check of finance. After much controversy the
corporation was reduced to sixty-four members, sixteen nominated
by the government, sixteen elected by the resident justices, and thirty-
two elected directly by the ratepayers. The executive power was
concentrated in the hands of the commissioner, but provision was
made for the weekly audit of the accounts by the town council, a
standing committee of the corporation, and for a monthly audit
by paid auditors.^ This constitution stood the test of experience and
remained in force with some additions and improvements till the end
of the period under review. Bombay was thus the first to solve satis-
factorily the problem of successful local self-government, not on a
1 Act IX of 1867 (Madras Council).
* Proceedings, Bombay Legis. Council, 27 March, 1872.
* Bombay Municipal Act of 1872.
PRESIDENCY TOWNS 527
model of the English system, but in a manner evolved by and for itself
— a strong executive officer controlled rigidly in financial matters
by a committee answerable to the corporation, half of whom were
directly elected by the ratepayers.^
In the meantime various acts had enlarged the powers of the
Calcutta corporation, mainly in connection with the provision of a
proper supply of filtered water. The bringing-in of a consolidating
act^ was the opportunity to revise the clumsy constitution of one
hundred and twenty justices vis-d-vis a strong commissioner, neither
side possessing clearly defined powers. Direct election by ratepayers
was introduced, two-thirds of the seventy-two members of the corpora-
tion being thus appointed. Salutary provisions for the payment of
interest on municipal debt and for the formation of a reserve fund
were made and special attention was paid to drainage, water supply,
and conservancy. Waterworks and sewers were constructed on a large
scale. Refuse and sweepings were taken outside the town, and the
practice of throwing corpses into the river was at last stopped. In
1 882 a large portion of the suburban area was added to the town, as
only thus could efficient water supply and drainage be given to those
places which had become increasingly liable to disease and were a
perpetual menace to the health of Calcutta. The opportunity was
taken to reconstitute the "town council", a body formed in imitation
of the Bombay body of that name, to increase to fifty the number of
commissioners elected by the ratepayers, and to make obligatory the
expenditure of two lakhs on drainage-works and the improvement of
congested areas. The government remitted the annual charge of almost
three lakhs for the police, and this money was applied to the improve-
ment of the new area. No move however had been made to strengthen
the executive, and experience was soon to show the necessity for
reform in this direction. Sanitary conditions became so menacing
that the government had to intervene, and in 1899 it passed a new
act which put definite limits to the interference with the executive
by the corporation and large committees. Although the executive was
supposed to be centred in the chairman, it was subject to the limita-
tions put upon it by resolutions, not only of the corporation as a whole,
but also of the committees dealing with subjects like water supply,
town improvement, roads, buildings, conservancy, etc. The corpora-
tion and these committees, being large bodies unsuited to deal with
details of administration, good government was an impossibility, as
the members would insist on discussing every little point of the work,
so that prompt action could seldom be taken.
Under the new act^ only half the commissioners were elected by
the ratepayers, the remainder being appointed, four each by the
Bengal Chamber of Commerce and the Calcutta Trades' Association,
^ For a full description see Masani, Evolution of Local Self-Government in Bombay.
2 IV of 1876 (Bengal Council). a m of 1899 (Bengal Council).
528 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
two by the port commissioners and fifteen by the local government.
The powers of the corporation were confined to the fixing of the rates
of taxation and to the performance of general functions — laying down
policy, etc., subjects which can be efficiently performed by a large
body. The executive was vested in the chairman, while between him
and the corporation was interposed a general committee consisting
of the chairman and twelve commissioners, four elected by the ward
commissioners, four by the other commissioners, and four appointed
by the local government. This committee was empowered to decide
matters too detailed for the decision of the corporation but too im-
portant to be left simply to the decision of the chairman. The recon-
stituted corporation directed its efforts to the punctual collection of
rates, the completion of the drainage system, and the improvement
of the water supply. Experience showed that there was plenty of
driving power in the corporation and that the revised constitution
had fulfilled its object of preventing action being strangled by debate.
Great strides were made in the health and improvement of the town,
but it was not popular government, and little interest was taken in
the elections.
Madras still suffered from lack of funds, the taxation per head being
in the 'seventies about a fifth of that in the other presidency towns.
There was no adequate water supply, no proper system of drainage,
and no funds to provide the one or the other. Indian members of
the legislative council protested against the need of drains and declared
that the population could bear no more taxation. The state of the
town with its rising death-rate finally convinced them that some-
thing had to be done. In 1878 the elective system was introduced,
sixteen out of the thirty- two members being elected by the ratepayers,
but the president and the two vice-presidents were salaried officials
appointed by the government.^ The corporation had power to deal
with the budget and the raising of loans, but the detailed scrutiny of
accounts was left to two official auditors who maintained a continuous
audit. Fresh taxes were imposed to carry through the much-needed
work of drainage and water supply as far as funds would allow, but
neither could be made really satisfactory or complete. A further
extension of the elective system was made in 1884^ when twenty-four
members were elected by the ratepayers, and the long struggle over
the water supply and drainage still continued. Like Calcutta, the
city of Madras lies in a plain far from hills, so that drainage presents
a problem of peculiar difficulty, while large capital was required to
bring good water from such a distance. As Madras had not developed
into a great commercial centre, like Bombay or Calcutta, there was
always a shortage of funds and continual efforts to find new sources
of taxation. In 1904 a new municipal act' was passed on the lines that
1 Act V of 1878 (Madras Council). 2 ^ct I of 1884 (Madras Council).
• Act III of 1904 (Madras Council).
DISTRICT TOWNS 529
had proved successful in Calcutta. The number of commissioners
elected by the ratepayers was reduced, while special representation
was given to the commercial interests in the town. The separate
functions of the corporation, standing committee, and the chairman,
were clearly defined, while the provisions for continuous audit were
maintained. Armed with this new constitution and large grants from
the government, Madras at last tackled its problems of water supply
and drainage on a comprehensive scale and started to deal with its
congested areas.
In the end all three towns, although by devious routes, found
ultimately the same solution for municipal administration, namely a
limited electorate, elaborate provisions for audit, a large corporation
with full control over finance, and a strong executive centred in a
government official, who was left much freedom of action within
well-defined limits. It was not local self-government as known in
England, or indeed in Europe, but a curious hybrid that solved the
elementary problems of water supply, drainage and conservancy, and
was later able to give these towns most of the amenities of modern
cities. The control of the government was mainly through the person of
the official who was in charge of the executive. Apart from this it was
limited to making comments on the annual and audit reports. If a
corporation failed to carry out certain statutory duties, the government
had the power to step in and have them done, but there was no power
of control over these bodies like that vested in England in the person
of an auditor armed with the power of surcharge. In its place are most
elaborate systems of audit and supervision but nothing of the simple
direct discipline of enforcing responsibility for public money by
touching the pockets of those who either misuse it or neglect to realise
it on behalf of the public.
District Towns
In Moghul times municipal administration, where it existed, was in
the hands of the kotwal or town-governor, who also combined the
duties of magistrate and police officer. An autocrat, who could do as
he pleased so long as the imperial government remained stable and
received the necessary revenues, the kotwal maintained a few simple
municipal services for the benefit of traders, as his income depended
on the flow of trade into the town.^ When the British took over the
administration of the country, it was only natural that the officials
and the people should sit down together to decide how funds could be
raised to pay a conservancy staff or a night-watch, who should be
responsible for the supervision and payment of the staff, etc. Leading
merchants, householders and landlords in concert decided how the
money should be raised, whether by house-rates, town-duties, tolls
^ Moreland, India at the Death ofAkbar, chap. ii.
c H I VI 34
530 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
or otherwise. They drew up an assessment list and appointed a man
to collect the money. Such a body, with the magistrate at its head,
was so powerful that nobody thought of opposing the demands of the
tax collector so long as these were reasonable — a committee of the
above description would not impose oppressive taxes — while all had
the satisfaction of a conservancy staff to clean up the town and of
hearing the night-watchman on his rounds in the dark. In some such
way municipal committees, without any legal sanction and without
any rules, started in the old commercial centres and political capitals
of India. Similar methods were employed for the larger villages,
which, when they contained administrative headquarters, soon began
to exhibit features characteristic of the town rather than of the
village. Such action has been known even in recent years and was
easy to take, as it suited the people who were ready for concerted
action but had a dread of putting themselves definitely under a new
law. This process can be illustrated from various parts of India.
In the Panjab, before the days of British administration, there had
been levied a tax — a handful — on all goods coming into the town.
After annexation the British officials continued this levy in many
places, devoting the proceeds to the maintenance of a police force and
then to improvements in the town. For the supervision of the latter
municipal committees, the members of which were often chosen by
the different communities, were called together and assisted the
officials in this work.^ The Panjab was a province of many towns,
which varied from large commercial and political capitals like Delhi,
Lahore, Amritsar, Peshawar and Multan, to big agricultural villages.
Municipal life grew naturally, suiting itself to the diversity of local
conditions, depending for guidance on the local officials. In the
Administration Report of 1855-6 it was noted that drainage existed
in all cities and elaborate projects had been formed for Lahore,
Amritsar and Ambala, the cost of which would be "chiefly defrayed
in the most spirited manner by the citizens". Although a few places
availed themselves of the general municipal act (XXVI of 1 850) , the
great majority were without legislation till Act XV of 1 867 was passed.
This was a brief measure enacted as an experiment for five years,
reserving wide powers to the lieutenant-governor and leaving to the
local committees the choice of their own form of taxation. Expendi-
ture fi-om the municipal fund was to be applied first to the main-
tenance of a poHce force and then to the making and repair of roads,
drains and tanks, and to the provision of lighting, poor-houses,
market-places and education.
In Bombay Presidency, on the other hand, great use was made of
Act XXVI, so that by 1856 it was in force in 336 "towns". To bring
it into force the local people had to petition the government for its
introduction, and the government, after giving the necessary sanction,
1 Proceedings, India Legis. Council, 14 December, 1866.
DISTRICT TOWNS 531
appointed the local magistrate and others to form a local committee,
which had power to propose taxes and carry out improvements in the
town. Apparently in this province the district officers had little
difficulty in finding half a dozen people in a town to forward a petition
on which action was taken to bring the act into force. ^ This act was
naturally vague in its provisions and so the greatest diversity of
customs and rules grew up under its nominal control. A peculiarly
fruitful field was found in the large villages of the Satara district,
where in pre-British days there had existed institutions of a municipal
type. By 1856 as many as 292 municipalities had been established in
this district 2 but most of them existed only for a year or two. Bombay
Presidency remained content with this act for some years, but legis-
lated so that dispensaries and schools might be paid out of municipal
funds, and later threw on them a proportion of the police charges.
The application of municipal government to many of these "towns"
was farcical, one mentioned in council when Act VI of 1873 was being
considered having an annual income of only Rs. 88, most of which
was used to pay an orderly.^ By the act of 1873 Bombay brought its
legislation into line with that of the rest of India and classified its
towns with a population of not less than 10,000 as "cities" and as
"towns" those of not less than 2000. It put a large non-official ele-
ment on the "city" boards and prescribed special conservancy work
for these places. The "town" municipalities remained still in the
hands of their presidents, the district officers, while even for the
"cities" there were no elected members.
In Madras the people stoutly resisted the introduction of Act XXVI
and none of the inhabitants could be persuaded to petition the govern-
ment for its introduction. As elsewhere the necessity arose of some sort
of municipal administration and voluntary associations were started in
a few places. These the government recognised by making grants equal
to the amount raised by private subscription. But the government did
not long remain satisfied with this system, and passed Act X of 1865
so that funds could be raised for the police in the country towns and
provision be made for the construction, repairing and cleansing of
drains, the making and repairing of roads, etc. The government
decided how much was to be raised in each town and then contributed
a quarter of that amount, partly to help the local people and partly to
prevent the local officers making too extravagant demands. There
was a strong official element on each board, and even the private
persons were all nominated and held office for one year only. By 1 869
the act had been introduced into forty-four towns, being received
with indifference in most places, and fierce opposition where strong
religious feelings existed. In some places, however, "the interest of
^ Proceedings, Bombay Legis. Council, ii August, 1873.
2 Administration Report, 1855-6.
' Proceedings, Bombay Legis. Council, 11 August, 1873.
34-2
532 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
the native commissioners was aroused and the act carried out with
great heartiness".^
In the Central Provinces and Oudh, Act XV of 1867, framed for
the Panjab, was introduced into several towns, the elective system
being adopted in many places from the first. The Jubbalpore
committee led the way in boldly borrowing money on perfectiy
adequate security to carry out a large water supply scheme,^ while
in Nagpur great progress had been made without any legislation in
cleaning up the town, driving streets through the worst areas, and
laying the foundations of a good drainage system.^ Lucknow, a city
that had been besieged and sacked, was in such a dreadful state that
a "Conservancy Committee" was formed in 1858, which worked on
the lines of Act XXVI, raised funds by means of long-established
octroi, and generally cleaned up the city. The position of the com-
mittee was legalised by Act XVIII of 1864, an act ahead of the times,
as provision was made in it for the annual election of nineteen out of
twenty-five commissioners. Funds were raised by octroi, but the old
tradition of imperial taxation remained as the divisional commissioner
retained for general purposes a share of the takings, being by law
compelled to give only one-third to the municipal committee. In the
North-Western Provinces legislation was modelled on that framed for
the Panjab the year before, save that the taxes were laid down and
limited by law and that the proportion of official members on the
boards was smaller.
In Bengal legislation was enacted to enable local officials to deal
with the insanitary conditions of the towns, which were thought to
be the reason for the widespread virulent epidemic in 1863. Act III
of 1864, which governed the larger towns, followed the lines of the
Calcutta Suburbs Act, with elaborate conservancy clauses. For the
smaller places Act VI of 1868 gave the local magistrate power to tax
for police and conservancy, and furnished him with a consultative
committee which might advise him about assessments and local im-
provements. In both cases all the non-officials were nominated and
control rested entirely with the magistrate. Taxation was strictly
limited, being mainly a house-rate in the former act and in the latter
a personal tax on the income of the inhabitants.
In Burma as early as 1853 two funds were started in Rangoon, one
from the proceeds of the sale of the town and suburban allotments,
which was spent on the reclamation of swamps, construction of roads,
etc., and the other, a municipal tax imposed on each site, used to pay
for the town police, conservancy staff, and regular repairs to roads,
bridges, etc. In 1858, after consultation with influential local in-
habitants, the municipal tax was extended to fourteen other towns. In
* Report of the Committee on Local Self-Government in Madras, 1882, pt i, chap. i.
' Proceedings, India Legis. Council, 11 March, 1873.
* Administration Report ^ 1862-3.
DISTRICT TOWNS 533
1 86 1 there was some correspondence with the Government of India
about the introduction of municipal committees, but the chief com-
missioner reported that, except in Rangoon, the people desired only to
be consulted occasionally about the disposal of municipal funds, but
not to have the actual management in their own hands. Finally,
however, in 1874 the British Burma Municipal Act was passed and
applied to seven towns. Under this act committees were nominated
for each of these towns, the elective principle not coming into force
till 1882. In addition to these seven towns there were in that year
twenty-four other places in which town-funds were raised though not
under any act, the funds being spent by the district officers with such
advice as could be obtained from the town elders. The people of the
lesser towns, where funds were raised, objected strenuously to any
proposals that their towns should be constituted municipalities, as
they feared that the establishment of a municipality would cause new
and heavy taxes to be levied and would lead to restrictions on their
freedom. 1
The start of municipal institutions was thus of diverse origin and
of varying procedure. Only in Bengal could they be said to be a
development of that in the presidency towns, where their power of
taxation and the interference of the government were strictly limited by
law. On the other hand, in the Panjab, Central Provinces and Bombay
municipal laws were vague, there were no legal limits to taxation, and
the local government had complete powers of control. Midway
between these two cases came the towns in Madras, where taxes were
prescribed and moderate limits imposed on taxation. It is noteworthy
that municipal life flourished most in the second group, as the form
of administration by a government official who consulted the leading
people was a natural and liberal growth from the rule of the kotwal,
while the system of octroi gave them easily and without oppression
the funds necessary for the simplest amenities of town life. In almost
all cases the members of the municipal committees were appointed
on the recommendation of the district magistrate, so there was little
responsible local government, although there was considerable asso-
ciation of the local people with the officials in the administration of
the towns. Some slight extension of the system occurred in the
'seventies, mainly in giving municipal bodies power to deal more
effectively with conservancy and water supply. Little was done,
however, to introduce the system of elected representatives, and,
where elections were held, they were not found to give satisfactory
results. The better-class Indian disliked soliciting or being dependent
on the votes of the crowd and much preferred to find his way to the
committee by government nomination. Not that the seats were not
prized. It was most agreeable to sit with the head of the district to
discuss what ought to be done in the town, and there was keen com-
^ Memoranda submitted to the Statutory Commission, 1930, p. 453 (Burma).
534 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
petition for this honour. These gentlemen did excellent and hard
work in many towns, numerous tributes existing in the administration
reports and elsewhere to the wisdom of their advice in sanitation and
their usefulness in explaining new measures to their fellow-townsmen.
Much was done to improve water supply, to promote public health
and to provide for education. It was not, however, local self-govern-
ment, but, as described by Lord Hobart, governor of Madras in 1874,
government by " an oligarchy dependent upon a superior power which
may control its action to almost any conceivable extent".^
Into such an atmosphere came the resolution of Lord Ripon's
government in May, 1882, insisting that government control over
local bodies should be from without rather than from within. It was
thought that sufficient control could be obtained if government
sanction were necessary for by-laws, new taxation, and the raising of
loans, and a final power left in the hands of the government to set aside
resolutions that were ultra vires or even to supersede altogether a local
body that habitually neglected its duties or abused its powers. These
proposals were largely borrowed from the powers of control over local
bodies in England, but again it may be noted that the most efficient
and educative part of the English control was omitted, namely the
power of the auditor to bring home to the individual members of the
local bodies through surcharge their financial responsibility for the
proper realisation and disbursement of public money. With the control
thus proposed the greatest possible extension of the elective system
was urged, so that the local townspeople might have the opportunity
of learning to govern themselves through their own representatives,
even though the elective system as tested by a few experiments had
had no wide success. It was further urged that municipalities should
be relieved by the provincial governments of the heavy police charges,
as the local bodies had no control over the police, but that they should
be given definite duties to perform in connection with education,
sanitation, public health, etc., matters which should prove of the
greatest interest to the people themselves.
Under this stimulus acts^ were passed for all the provinces, making
election compulsory for a large proportion — from one-half to three-
quarters — of the municipal commissioners, and giving power for the
appointment of an elected chairman. This power was not utilised to
any great extent. Even when the power to elect the chairman was
granted, the municipal commissioners often elected an official, usually
the district officer, to this post. This not only indicated the friendly
co-operation already existing between the officials and the people,
but also the knowledge that the district officer could maintain their
rights better than any elected non-official. On the whole, great
^ Report of the Committee on Local Self-Government in Madras, 18O2, p. 9.
2 XV of 1883, XIII of 1B84, XVII of 1884, XVIII of 1889, III of 1884 (Bengal
Council), IV of 1884 (Madras Council), II of 1884 (Bombay Council).
DISTRICT TOWNS 535
interest was not taken in the elections, only a small proportion of the
voters exercising their rights, and many of the seats were uncontested.
There were, of course, exceptions in all the provinces, but at the end
of the nineteenth century it was generally held to be too soon to say
that Lord Ripon's policy in introducing self-government had been a
success. In some large towns, thanks to exceptional individual non-
officials of strong personality, it had succeeded, but in most places it
was still necessary for the local officials to help the private chairman
in administration.
While most of the larger towns in the west and north of India were
making good progress in providing wholesome water, proper drainage,
lighting, etc., the need for much simpler administration for the
small towns and large villages was met by leaving such places
outside the ordinary municipal law. These were constituted "notified
areas", areas in which only a few provisions of the municipal acts
applied, but where, as they developed, other sections could be brought
into force. Such places were administered by nominated committees
with the local officials at their head.
Except in Madras and Bengal the executive of the towns remained
largely official, as the election of non-official chairmen came very
slowly and was by no means universal by 191 8. In the Panjab in 191 5
out of the eighty-three towns that had the privilege of electing their
own chairman, only ten chose a non-official, ^ while in Bombay and
the United Provinces the number of non-official chairmen was in-
creased only by continual efforts on the part of the local governments.
In many cases local factions and sectarian differences made the posi-
tion of an elected private person untenable, while in others he had
neither the time nor the staff to maintain administration at a reason-
able level. Latterly several towns in Bombay and the United Provinces
have tried the experiment of concentrating executive power in the
hands of an experienced paid officer on the model that had been
found to work well in Bombay city.
Octroi or town-duties, the main source of municipal revenues in
Bombay, the Panjab, the United and the Central Provinces, had been
in existence in some form or other from a very early period. Megas-
thenes and Strabo refer to them, while the Ain-i-Akbari records show
that they were in force in the period of Muhammadan power and
that the duty of collection was in the hands of the kotwal. These town-
duties had been part of the imperial revenues, but at the beginning
of the nineteenth century began to be utilised for municipal purposes.
In the hands of energetic officers who wanted to carry out local
improvements, desired by the residents in the towns, they furnished
an easy means of finding the necessary funds. The East India Com-
pany, alarmed at the hindrance to trade that was caused by the
numerous imposts, abolished the tax in Bengal and the North-Western
^ Panjab Municipal Resolution, 191 5-1 6.
536 LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
Provinces in 1835, but acquiesced in its revival in the latter province
and its use in the Panjab, Bombay and Central Provinces. The tax
had many obvious advantages as a means of finding money wanted
for municipal improvements. It was highly productive ; it was borne by
all, yet hardly felt by the townspeople; it grew with the prosperity and
needs of the town and was paid apparently by others, the traders, who
could well afford the chungi or handful from their goods, or the country
people who had in return the privilege of using the town market ;
above all it was the old customary tax of India. The Government of
India, which always had its suspicions about this tax, as it was con-
trary to the English tradition of local taxation and freedom of trade,
wrote in 1868: "It is to little purpose that the imperial government
reduces or abolishes customs duties in the interests of trade if muni-
cipalities are permitted to levy duties on articles of commerce passing
through their limits. In all parts of India municipal taxation is
largely on the increase and there is a growing tendency to overlook
for the sake of small local improvements the real injury that is being
inflicted upon important general interests".^ For the next fifty years
there was a continual struggle between the government and the muni-
cipalities, the latter always wanting more and more money for their
development and finding it with least difficulty by an extension of the
octroi system, while the former struggled to keep it confined to articles
actually consumed within the towns. For the latter purpose elaborate
systems of bonded warehouses and refunds for goods in transit through
towns were utilised, but these did little to mitigate the evils of the
octroi system that became more and more apparent as municipal
administration improved. These were laid bare by the report of the
municipality taxation committee of the United Provinces in 1909,
who found that the advantages of the system were outweighed by the
disadvantages, namely, the heavy cost of collection of the tax, the
prevalence of corruption owing to the necessity of employing a large
and poorly paid staff, and the delay and loss caused to all traders both
by the imposition of the tax and the procedure for getting refunds.
They recommended its replacement in the smaller towns by direct
taxation and at the larger centres by a terminal tax, a system that
had been found to work well at Cawnpore and to be no hindrance to
trade. The change proved difficult, as there was the most vehement
opposition to direct taxation. Even where this had been in existence
for some time, it was found that the revision of assessments led to no
increase in the rates, as a committee of elected commissioners seldom
raised the assessments, although with the growth of the town there
had been a large rise in the value of the properties concerned.
Gradually, however, octroi was replaced by direct taxation in many
of the smaller towns and elsewhere by terminal charges. The latter
were collected without difficulty, but collections of the former were
^ Proceedings, Government of India, 6 November, 1868.
OCTROI DUTIES 537
always in arrears, sometimes so great that the taxes themselves
lapsed.
In Madras and Bengal more progress had been made in the intro-
duction of elected non-official chairmen, but, as in other places, they
lacked an efficient staff. In the absence of octroi, they had the addi-
tional difficulty of being entirely dependent for their funds on the
assessment and collection of direct taxation, whether in the shape of
a rate or of a charge for services rendered. Seldom did the municipal
executive dare to use their powers to make full and prompt collections
of the rates assessed, while the periodical revision of assessments was
undertaken in a half-hearted manner. Often insanitary conditions
were preferred to a strict administration, with the result that progress
towards a good water supply and proper drainage was spasmodic
rather than continuous, depending as it did mainly on donations from
the local government. Elections were keenly contested, not only at
the polls but also in the courts, one-sixth of the elections in Bengal in
1 91 5 being the subject of civil suits. ^ But the zeal for the public good
seemed to grow weaker after the acquisition of a seat on the local
authority. In some cases, it is true, the members of municipalities did
excellent work. The majority, however, did not recognise the fact that
as trustees of the public they were bound to see that public money was
collected fairly and also spent to the best advantage. Government
control had been reduced to the extent advocated in 1882, and was
much less than that exercised in England by the Local Government
Board over local authorities ; but municipal bodies showed few signs
of that healthy exercise of public spirit and enterprise to be found in
those after whose fashion they had been created. In 1919 the govern-
ment of Bengal observed:
One of the most noticeable features of the reports for the year is the reiterated
and general complaint of the inadequacy of municipal funds to maintain any high
standard of administration, combined with a general disinclination on the part
of municipal boards to raise funds for the purpose. . . . Many boards have only
elementary ideas of the duties and responsibilities of municipal administration.
The incidence of taxation is below R. i per head in more than one-fourth of the
municipalities, and at this figure it is impossible to expect much in the way of
civic amenities.^
From the above review it will be seen that British administrators
were more successful in retaining and developing the indigenous local
self-government of the villages than in transplanting urban and rural
organisations to their appropriate habitats in India. After many ex-
periments an efficient system was evolved for the presidency towns,
thanks to the intimate intermingling of official and private elements
in these corporations. In the smaller towns and districts, however, no
great success was achieved in establishing a local self-government at
once competent and capable of a healthy natural development.
^ Bengal Municipal Resolution for 1915-16. ^ Idem, 1918-19.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE NATIONAL CONGRESS AND EARLY
POLITICAL LITERATURE
XOLITICAL activity in India has been marked by a tardy
beginning and very rapid development. For the first thirty or forty
years after the decision to base higher education on occidental rather
than on oriental literature, educated Indians were engaged in ab-
sorbing the new ideas. The first effects of the impact were noticeable
in the religious field, causing the formation and growth of new sects,
accompanied by a revival of orthodoxy. Higher education was so
largely in the hands of missionaries that the earliest activities were
directed towards examination of faith and consequently led to move-
ments for social reform. In Bengal the Brahmo Samaj founded by
Raja Ram Mohan Roy (i 772-1833) was a theistic sect, the members
of which supported the abolition of sati. While it was under the
leadership of Debendranath Tagore a schism occurred. A young
minister of the sect, Keshub Chundra Sen (1838-84) was dismissed
and founded a new society, the main question in dispute being the
toleration of Hindu usages and customs which appeared innocent.^
Members of this pressed on radical social reforms in regard to mar-
riage, female education and temperance. Sir Surendranath Banerjee
in his autobiography 2 describes the great effect on young minds of
public speeches on religious and social topics by Keshub Chundra
Sen, on temperance by Peary Churn Sircar, and on the remarriage of
widows by Pandit Iswar Chunder Vidyasagar. From ethics and social
improvement the step to political activity was short. Works by the
English liberals provided inspiration, and the affairs of Italy, and
above all, the career and writings of Mazzini, quickened the imagina-
tion of young Bengalis, already enlivened by religious and ethical
excitement.
At Calcutta there already existed a British Indian Association,
chiefly supported by the landed proprietors to look after their interests.
Sir S. N. Banerjee, who joined the Indian Civil Service in 1871 and
was dismissed a year later, took up educational work and devoted
much time to his students outside the class-rooms. In his own words
his aim was " to kindle in the young the beginnings of public spirit and
to inspire them with a patriotic ardour, fruitful of good to them and
to the motherland ",^ and his method was to lecture on Indian unity,
the study of history, the lives of Mazzini and Chaitanya,* and higher
* Max Miiller, Chips from a German ivorkshop, ii, 63 (1895 ed.).
* A Nation in the Making, pp. 6-8. ^ Idem, p. 35.
* Fl. 1 485- 1 52 7. Founder of the modern Vaishnava sect in Bengal.
RACIAL CONFLICTS %39
education in English. Pursuing his desire to awaken in the middle
classes a more lively interest in public affairs, he helped to found the
( Indian Association in 1876. Within a year an opportunity came for
extending political agitation in other parts of India. The reduction
of the age limit for entrance to the Indian Civil Service (see chapter;
xx) was regarded as injurious to Indian candidates and delegates
were sent first to Northern India, and later to the west and south, to
arouse interest in a memorial praying for the raising of the limit and
for simultaneous examinations, and to establish branch associations.
Accompanying these legitimate movements was an undercurrent of
dislike and antagonism which showed itself by scurrilous writings in
the vernacular press charging the British government with injustice
and tyranny.^ In April, 1878, an act was passed for the better control
of the vernacular press, and this measure and an act to limit the
possession of arms led to further activity in criticism of the government
and discontent with the opportunities available to Indians of con-
trolling the direction of public affairs, as well as of obtaining posts in
the public service.
A change in the government in England led to the resignation of
Lord Lytton, who was succeeded as viceroy by Lord Ripon in 1 880. >
His early announcement of projected advances in local self-govern- ^
ment (see chapter xxviii) was welcomed by the Indian Association,
and his repeal of the Press Act which had been condemned at the1>'
time of its passing by Mr Gladstone, greatly increased his popularity.
During his term of office racial conflict was embittered by a con-
troversy over limits to the jurisdiction exercised by Indian magistrates
in cases where a European was charged with an offence. Lord Ripon's
government introdu££iLa-bill^ to extend this jurisdiction and a strong^
agitation was raised by non-official Europeans, especially the indigo
and tea planters, who resided on estates often remote from the head-
quarters of police and magistrates and were particularly liable to be
the subject of groundless or exaggerated charges. A counter resent-
ment was stirred up in the minds of the Indian middle classes, who
felt that a racial privilege was being perpetuated, and that a slur was
cast on Indian magistrates. Sir Henry Cotton, who at the time was
an official in Bengal, and who after his retirement joined the Indian
National Congress, was of opinion that this agitation and the protests
by Europeans against the policy of Lord Ripon tended more strongly ,
to unite Indian national opinions than legislation on the lines of the ,
original bill would have done.^
Another religious movement, the followers of which had a strong
influence on political thought, was the Arya Samaj, founded by
Dayanand Saraswati (1825 o^ 1827-83).* Unlike the Brahmo Samaj,
^ Sir George Campbell, Memoirs of my Indian Career, 11, 314; and Bengal Administration
Reports, 1874-5, and 1875-6. *^'2 Known as the Ilbert bill.
* H. J. S. Cotton, New India, p. 4. * Max Miiller, op. cit. n, 167.
540 CONGRESS AND EARLY POLITICAL LITERATURE
which evolved an eclectic faith, this new society based its creed on the
Vedas, and claimed that these alone were the revealed scriptures and
that they contained mystical references to all knowledge, even to the
discoveries of modern science. Mme Blavatsky, the founder of the
Theosophical Society, had been affected by Buddhism, and used this
new doctrine in developing her cult.^ While the Brahmo Samaj was
mainly confined to Bengal, and the Arya Samaj to Western and
Northern India, theosophy attracted individuals in all parts of India,
and had its established centre near Madras. None of these spiritual
movements had any direct political aims, but they brought together
men who were seeking fresh interpretation of the old faiths, and who
naturally passed thence into affairs of state. In 1 883 the Bengal group of
' young political workers organised a national fund and held their first
national conference attended by delegates from the principal towns.
They were doubtless closely following affairs in Ireland, where the
Irish National League had taken the place of the defunct land league
in the previous October. A year later a small meeting in Madras,
chiefly composed of delegates to the annual convention of the Theo-
sophical Society, decided to organise committees to gather adherents
for an Indian national union, and meet again for political discussions. ^
yln 1 885 the national conference met again at Calcutta, with delegates
from Northern India as well as from Bengal, and simultaneously the
national union held a series of meetings at Poona which constituted
• the first Indian National Congress, and absorbed the earlier institu-
tion. The promoters of both these gatherings made representative
government their main objective, and announced their hopes that
the conferences would develop into Indian parliaments. A congress
resolution asked for a considerable proportion of elected members in
the existing councils, for the creation of new councils in the North-
western Provinces and Oudh (now the United Provinces) and in the
Panjab, for the right to discuss the budget and to put interpellations
on all branches of the administration, and for the formation of a\
standing committee of the House of Commons to consider protests by
legislative councils if they were overruled by the executive. The
congress also desired to abolish the council of the secretary of state,
to have simultaneous examinations in India and England to admit
candidates for the Indian Civil Service, the age being raised, and to
limit military expenditure. It deprecated the annexation of Upper
Burma on the score of expense, and suggested that, if annexation took
place, the whole of Burma should be administered separately from
India, as a crown colony.
The meeting stimulated further political activity and organisation,
and was repeated annually. An attempt was made to give it a repre-
sentative character, but for some years the delegates could be chosen
* Encycl. Brit, nth ed. xxvi, 789.
* Annie Bcsant, How India wrought for frudomy p. i .
MUSLIMS AND THE CONGRESS -Q^i^
by any association of any kind or indeed at any public meeting con-
vened by anybody. A few Europeans became members, but their
example has not had many followers. Muslims joined only in small
numbers, and their sympathy as a community with the congress was ^
weakened by a lecture delivered at Lucknow by the late Sir Sayyid
Ahmad in December, 1887, while the congress was meeting in
Madras.^ Sir Sayyid, after a long career in the judicial service of the
United Provinces, had devoted himself to promoting the study of
English by Muslims, and had been a nominated member of the
imperial legislative council. He was entirely free from religious pre-
judice, and had indeed exerted himself to reduce it, but he main- i
tained that, in the conditions then existing in India, compliance with f
the demands made by the congress would injure the state. Competitive
examinations, though suitable in English conditions, would in India
lead to the selection of officials whose origin would make them in-
acceptable to the strongly conservative Indian with his pride in
ancestry. Diversity of race and tradition created another problem,
and domination by the Bengalis, who were likely to gain most of the >
posts, would not be submitted to by Muslims and Rajputs with their*
more warlike traditions. The second congress in 1886 had elaborated
the previous scheme for representation in legislative councils, asking
that not less than half the members should be elected, and not more
than a quarter nominated non-officials. Sir Sayyid pointed out thaf],
in any ordinary system the Muslims would be in a minority, and, evenp
if special representation were given to them, their backwardness in 3
education and their comparative poverty would place them at a
disadvantage. He asserted the loyalty of the Indian people and the
comparative insignificance of those who wished for political power,
and he questioned the authority of the congress to criticise military
expenditure. In a later address he shrewdly doubted the willingness
of Indians to tax themselves even if they had the power. Although
the third congress elected a Muslim gentleman from Bombay as
president. Sir Sayyid's advice was followed by most Muslims for
twenty years, and was not appreciably affected by a resolution of the
fourth congress that resolutions should not be introduced for dis-
cussion if one community strongly objected, or be passed if such
objection became apparent during discussion.
A change in viceroys. Lord Dufferin having succeeded Lord Ripon
at the end of 1884, meant no reversal of the general policy of meeting ^
reasonable demands with a liberality confined only by restrictions which
those best fitted to judge held necessary in the view of all interests.
Lord Dufferin had previous experience in the near East of the ways
of Eastern autocracy, and in Canada of the position of a constitutional
governor-general in a dominion feeling its way to responsible govern-
ment. His natural inclination to liberal measures was tempered by
* Sir Sayyid Ahmad, On the present state of Indian politics, Allahabad, 1888, p. i.
(^ CONGRESS AND EARLY POLITICAL LITERATURE
^the dangers of academic idealism impressed on him as an Irish land-
lord, who had managed his own estates. Only a year before he went
to India he had drawn up a scheme^ for associating the people more
closely with the governmentJn^Egypt, which was in force for twenty
years, 2 and has been copied by several constitution makers for India.
After two years' study of Indian conditions he recorded a minute
(1886) which exhibits his insight into the real desires of the forward
party, and his sagacity regarding the method for meeting them. He
desired to make a careful examination of the demands,
. . .to give quickly and with a good grace whatever it may be possible or desirable
Ito accord ; to announce that the concessions must be accepted as a final settlement
of the Indian system for the next ten or fifteen years ; and to forbid mass meetings
and incendiary speechifying.^
Soon after his arrival he had felt the desirability of reform in the
\legislative councils, and he now advocated changes which would give
;the viceroy the advantage of relying more largely upon the experience
'and counsels of Indian coadjutors, while the possibility of their having
a party behind them would relieve the Government of India from its
existing isolation.
Another period of two years passed before definite proposals were
sent home (November, 1888), in a dispatch accompanied by a minute
^ of Lord Dufferin. He had described in 1886 the risks to be incurred
by introducing a representative element into the Government of India,
but was prepared to liberalise at all events the provincial legislative
councils, one of which, in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, was
created in that year. Supported by a committee of his executive
council Lord Dufferin described his scheme as
a plan for the enlargement of our provincial councils, for the enhancement of
their status, the multiplication of their functions, the partial introduction into
them of the elective principle, and the liberalisation of their general character
as political institutions.*
At the same time he deprecated the inference that the Government of
India were contemplating, in the provinces, an approach to English
parliamentary government and an English constitutional system. The
Indian executive was directly responsible to the sovereign and to the
British parliament and must remain so while Great Britain continued
to be the pRT3mo^int administrative povyer in India. Describing the
British system of responsible government, he pointed out that it
could not be introduced into an Indian province because the
governor, if a vote was carried against him in his legislative council,
could not "call upon the dissentients to take the place of his own
* Sir A. Lyall, Life of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, p. 43.
2 Idem, p. 48. ' Idem, p. 151.
* Montagu-Ghelmaford Report, paras. 67-8.
DUFFERIN'S PROPOSALS (543-
official advisers, who are nominated by the queen-empress on the
advice of the secretary of state". In proposing to hberalise the '^
government, therefore, he insisted on the necessity orieaving "in
the hands of each provincial government the ultimate decision upon
all important questions and the paramount control of its own policy",
by arranging that nomirxatpd mem hers of legislative councils should
outnumber the elected members, and that the governor could over-
rule his council when he felt it necessary to do so. He foresaw that
even with these limited powers the elected members would be able to
influence the policy of the government, and he felt that their presence
in the council would be beneficial by enlarging the field of public
discussion, while they would consider themselves "responsible to
enlightened and increasing sections of their own countrymen".
The Conservative government in England declined to agree to any-^?
system of election on the ground that "it would be unwise to introduce
a fundamental change of this description without much more evidence
in its favour than was forthcoming".^ Lord Lansdowne, who had
now succeeded Lord Dufferin, supported his recommendation, and ^'
asked that at least the Government of India might be empowered to
make rules for the appointment of additional members by nomination
or otherwise, t^'lnclude election whereconditions justified its use.
A bill was prepared in 1889, bulliormtroduced till February, 1890
(House of Lords). From the papers which were simultaneously
presented 2 all reference to a system of election was completely
excluded, and the only portions of Lord Dufferin's minute, a state
paper of the highest value, which appeared in them were his recom-
mendations that the annual budget should be presented and dis-
cussed,^ and that non-official members should be allowed to ask
questions. Lord Gross accepted these and was also prepared to in-
crease considerably the number of nominated members in the councils,
and the bill provided for all these matters.^ While the proposals met
with no opposition in the House of Lords, the government was strongly
pressed to allow some methxidjotekdion, and to publish in full the
dispatches and minutes. Lord Ripon asserted that Lord Dufferin's
minute had been surreptitiously printed in India, and it was known
that he favoured election.^ Lord Northbrook spoke eloquently in
favour of it, while at the same time deprecating any approach to the
British system: "India is a long way from having what is called a
responsible government, namely an administration composed of men
who possess a majority in the representative assembly".^ He was not
opposed to a body like the congress, though he admitted that certain
1 Montagu-Chelmsford Report, para. 69. ^ Cd. 5950 of 1890.
' Lord Mayo had proposed this for provincial councils twenty years earlier, but without
success, vide Mr Gurzon, Hansard, 28 March, 1892, p. 60.
* Another clause was added to give provincial councils powers of modifying laws passed
by the imperial council after 1861. See Lord Herschell in Hansard, 13 March, 1890,
p. 669. ^ Hansard, 6 March, 1890, p. 63.
544 CONGRESS AND EARLY POLITICAL LITERATURE
members were circulating papers which might be dangerous, and he
deprecated the scheme of election which it had advocated. AH those
who supported him were agreed that details must be worked out in
India owing to the complexity and variety of Indian conditions, and
there was a disposition to avoid motions on the budget as leading to
irresponsible discussion. Lord Salisbury laid stress on the deep re-
sponsibility on any government that introduced the elective principle ^
as an effective agent in the government of India. He was careful to
make no rash prophecy about the future and said : " It may be — I do
not desire to question it — that it is to be the ultimate destiny of India ".^
But he pointed out that the idea was foreign to the East and its
adoption had so far produced no tangible results in Turkey or Egypt.
Representative government appeared to him admirable only when all
those who were represented desired much the same thing and had
interests which were tolerably analogous. Echoing perhaps the
addresses of Sir Sayyid Ahmad, he laid stress on the radical and acrid
differences betweenj^"*^" ^^^f^ Mnjiamm^idf^gj and he poured ridi-
cule on the idea that a constituency for representing virile communities
like Panjabis and Rajputs or even the ryots could be found in a body
elected for making streets and drains. He held that the chief need
was for aJiilJfr rpprps<^n(^tion of all interests.
Though the bill quickly passed through the House of Lords, it was
never taken up in the Commons. Irish affairs, while they had been an
incentive to the Indian politicians and their supporters in England,
proved a deterrent to the government. Mr Bradlaugh had already
introduced one Home Rule bill for India, at the request of the Indian
National Congress of 1889. It provided an elaborate scheme of
electoral colleges, with proportional representation, and a large
number of elected members. After the withdrawal (5 August, 1890)
of the government measure, he produced a more modest bill, leaving
details to be settled by rules. Mr Balfour's Land Purchase Bill for
Ireland was occupying public time, and, though the Indian Councils
bill was revived early in 1891, the certainty of great pressure to make
it more liberal deterred the government, and it was again dropped
after several postponements, causing great disappointment in India.
The president of the congress meeting of that year explained the
dropping of the bill as due to the death of Mr Bradlaugh.
With the break-up of the Parnellite party and the death of its leader,
preoccupation with the affairs of Ireland was less intense, and a fresh
bill passed the House of Lords in February, 1892, with little comment,
as it contained a clause wide enough to permit some degree of an
elective principle, though not prescribing it. Lord Northbrook indeed
said that he preferred to describe his object as "representation'*
rather than "election", which Lord Kimberley had advocated.
Commenting on this Lord Salisbury agreed with the former.^
^ Hansard, 6 March, 1890, p. 98. " Idem, 15 February, 1892, p. 117.
THE ACT OF 1892 545
Speaking with less derision of the local bodies, he said that the govern-
ment wished to popularise them and to bring them into harmony with
the dominant sentiment of the Indian people, and added :
But we must be careful lest, by the application of occidental machinery, we bring
into power not the strong, natural, vigorous, effective elements of Indian society,
but the more artificial and weakly elements, which we ourselves have made and
have brought into prominence. It would be a great evil if, in any system of
government which we gradually develop, the really strong portions of Indian
society did not obtain that share in the government to which their natural position
among their own people traditionally entitles them.
By a strange coincidence it fell to Mr G. N. Gurzon to conduct this
bill through the House of Gommons, as under-secretary of state, and
a quarter of a century later to draw up the final draft of a pronounce-
ment which led to the tentative introduction of responsible govern-
ment in Indian provinces. Like other spokesmen of the government, ^.
he described the bill as in no sensejcreating a parliamentary systeni^
No objection was raised to the proposals fbF"discussioh of The budget,
and the right to put questions. The chief controversy was on the
matter of election, and an amendment was moved by Mr Schwann to
declare that no system would be satisfactory which did not embody
this. 2 In committee he elaborated details which would have had the
effect of fixing the number of elected members at between one-third
and a half of the total membership, with election by ballot and not
less than 2 per cent, of the population enfranchised.^ Though the
government was not prepared to bind itself to such a definite scheme, ^
it was clearly understood that the rulesto be fraaaed would recognise
the principle of election. Sir El"TempTerwho had had a wide official
experience in India and had been governor of Bombay, suggested
that the sixteen additional members of the viceroy's council should
be chosen by the towns in which an elective system was in force for
municipal purposes,* and Mr Gurzon indicated as bodies which
would be suitable as constituencies the British Indian Association
(which Lord Ripon had already used to suggest additional members
for the discussion on the Bengal Tenancy Act), the chambers of com-
merce, the corporations of great cities, universities and various great
religious associations. Mr Gladstone was satisfied that it was intended
to have selection after election and deprecated a division on
Mr Schwann's proposal to prescribe this in the bill, as it was not the
business of parliament to devise machinery for the purposes of Indian
government, though it was right to give those who represented Her
Majesty in India ample information as to what parliament believed
to be the sound principled of government.^ The premature claims of
the congress to be accepted as representative were criticised by
Mr Gurzon in picturesque and illuminating fashion :
1 Hansard, 28 March, 1892, p. 57. ^ Idem^ 28 March, 1892, p. 68.
3 Idem, pp. 1 301 sqq. * Idem, p. 98. ^ Idem, p. 80.
c H I VI 35
546 CONGRESS AND EARLY POLITICAL LITERATURE
You can as little judge of the feelings and inspiration of the people of India
from the plans and proposals of the congress party as you can judge of the physical
configuration of a country which is wrapped in the mists of early morning, but
a few of whose topmost peaks have been touched by the rising sun.
Sir Richard Temple, with a more intimate knowledge of individual
members, gave a warning against entrusting more political powers to
them until they showed "greater moderation, greater sobriety of
thought, greater robustness of intelligence, greater self-control — all
which qualities build up the national character. . .".
The bill having been passed without amendment (26 May, 1892),
the Government of India were informed that parliament intended
that:
where corporations have been established with definite powers, upon a recognised
administrative basis, or where associations have been formed upon a substantial
^. community of legitimate interests, professional, commercial or territorial, the
governor-general and the local governors might find convenience and advantage
in consulting from time to time such bodies, and in entertaining at their discretion
y an expression of their views and recommendations with regard to the selection ^
of members in whose qualifications they might be disposed to confide.^
The possible number of additional members was increased under
the act from twelve to sixteen in the imperial council, was more than
doubled in Bombay and Madras, and was raised by 70 per cent, in
Bengal and the North-Western Provinces and Oudh. By the regula-
tions it was provided that some of these should be nominated after
recommendation by certain bodies. 2 Of the ten non-official members of
the imperial council, four were to be chosen by the non-official addi-
tional members of the councils in Madras, Bombay, Bengal and the
North-Western Provinces and Oudh, and one by the Calcutta Chamber
of Commerce, the remaining seats being reserved for the appointment
of experts on special subjects of legislation and the proper representa-
tion by nomination of different classes of the community. For the
provincial councils the method of selection varied according to local
conditions. Each of the three presidency cities (Madras, Bombay and
Calcutta) nominated a member, and there were representatives of
■ the trading.jas5ociations and senates of universities. Representatives
of the district boards and smaller municipal boards met in an electoral
college to select other nominees. The scale of representatives of
municipal boards was based on the income of the municipality in
Bengal and on the population in Bombay, while in the North-Western
Provinces and Oudh each municipal board sent only one representa-
tive to the electoral college. Thus in Bengal the influence of the towns
outweighed that of the countryside. In Bombay the bigger landi
owners also had a right of nomination.
* Montagu-Chelmsford Report, para. 69.
2 Cd. 86 of 1894.
ELECTORAL SYSTEM 547
Although the act was criticised by the congress of 1892 for not
containing an explicit recognition of the right to elect, the regulations
made under it had the practical effect of instituting an elective
system, and the other changes it made indicated that the councils
were no longer to remain, as they had been under the act of 186 1,
bodies which met only when legislative business was on hand. In the
thirty years which had elapsed since they were constituted it had been
possible only on sixteen occasions to discuss financial matters, while
now the budget was to be presented annually whether taxation was,
being altered or not. And the right to put questions was a definite
enlargement of the powers of members.
35-2
CHAPTER XXX
THE RISE OF AN EXTREMIST PARTY
KJn 5 August, 1832, Mountstuart Elphinstone predicted to a select
committee of the House of Commons that if the Indian press were
free we should, as time went on, find ourselves in such a predicament
as no state had ever yet experienced.
"In other countries", he said, "the use of the press has extended along with
the improvement of the country and the intelHgence of the people; but in India
we shall have to contend at once with the more refined theories of Europe and
with the prejudices and fanaticism of Asia, both rendered doubly formidable by
the imperfect education of those to whom every appeal will be addressed."
Similar views had been expressed by Munro and Malcolm.^ A free
press, Munro thought, would inevitably generate "insurrecdon and
anarchy". But such warnings were disregarded by Charles Metcalfe
in 1 835, when, as acdng governor-general, he removed all press restric-
tions on the ground that whatever the consequences might be, this step
was requisite for the spread in India of Western knowledge and civi-
lisation. Twenty-one years later, after the licence enjoyed byindigenous
newspapers had liberally contributed to the causes of the Mutiny,^
Lord Canning imposed temporary restrictions, which remained in
operation for a year. In 1878 Lord Lytton's government, holding that
the seditious tone of the vernacular newspapers compelled some cur-
tailment of the "exceptional tolerance" accorded to journalists, and
that freedom of the press was rather a privilege to be worthily earned
and rationally enjoyed than "a fetish to be worshipped", passed a
Vernacular Press Act which was severely criticised in England and
repealed by his successor in 1882. In 1883, when the Ilbert bill
controversy was raging in Bengal, Sir Alfred Lyall, lieutenant-governor
of the North-Western Provinces, observed that the tone of the native
press in that province was daily growing more vicious and insulting
and might end by "leavening the mass" to a greater degree than was
fancied. He was constantiy speculating as to how far it could possibly
"be despised as impotent and absurd".^
I It is clear that from early days the congress included two parties of
' Hindus. There were the Western-educated followers of Gladstonian
liberalism,* loyal to British rule but anxious to press on politically,
who drew much inspiration from English literature and history and
gathered strength from their power to appeal to English democratic
sympathies. There were also reactionary and irreconcilable Hindus,
^ Malcolm, Political History of India, ii, App. vi.
' See Lord Canning's speech to his legislative council, 13 June, 1857, quoted ap.
Donogh, Law of Sedition, pp. 182-3.
* Durand, Life of Lyall, p. 283. * Idem, p. 305.
REACTIONARY HINDUISM
549
who regarded the memories of Muslim supremacy and the intrusions
of British rule and Western culture with rooted aversion. Prudential
considerations, the respect generally enjoyed by the government, its
ability to guard the country from the obvious menace of Russian
invasion and from the feuds of India's numerous factions ^ dictated
caution ; but the will to strike was there and found a vent in bitter and
slanderous passages in congress publications. ^ To Hume these were
justifiable weapons in a "war of propaganda ".^ To the government
they seemed unworthy of serious notice. But to the great Muslim
leader, Sir Sayyid Ahmad, the congress publications represented a
grave danger. He impressed on his co-religionists that the promoters
of the movement desired that the government of India should be
English in name but their own in fact, and that if the agitation spread
from the unwarlike to the warlike classes, it would go beyond writing
and talking and would lead to bloodshed. If the Muslims joined in
"unreasonable schemes" which were disastrous for the country and
themselves, the viceroy would realise that "a Mohammedan agitation
was not the same as a Bengali agitation",^ and would be bound to
take strong measures. He implored the Muslims to have nothing to
do with the congress.
The congress, however, gathered a few Muslim adherents, as time
went on; and gradually its extreme section discovered a leader. In
the meantime the death of a Hindu child-wife in Calcutta led to the
prosecution of her husband for culpable homicide and to the passing
in 1 89 1 of an Age of Consent Act which prohibited cohabitation before
a wife reached the age of twelve. This legislation produced violent
excitement among the Hindus of Calcutta, who complained that their
religion was in danger ; and articles in the Bangabasi newspaper pub-
lished there led to the prosecution of the editor, manager and printer
for sedition.^ But reactionary Hinduism found its chief exponent in
Bombay.
The Konkanasth or Chitpavan Brahmans of Western India have
always been remarkable for ability. It was under a Chitpavan
dynasty that the Maratha empire had reached its highest point and
afterwards declined to its fall. Chitpavans had adapted themselves
to calmer times and were prominent at the bar, in education and in
government service; but some there were who mourned the fallen
glories of the Peshwas; and prominent among these was Bal
Gangadhar Tilak, educationist and journalist. Elected to the subjects
committee of the congress of 1 889, he soon established a leading
position. His determined character, his Sanskrit learning, his mastery
^ Durand, Life of Lyall, p. 300.
2 See, for instance, certain passages in the Report of the congress meetings in 1890.
* Wedderburn, A. 0. Hume, pp. 68, 76-7.
* Sir Sayyid Ahmad, On the present state of Indian Politics, p. 18.
^ See Donogh, op. cit. chapter iv; also Mitra's article in the Fortnightly, xcv, 147;
Farquhar, Modern Religious\Movements in India, pp. 397-8.
550 THE RISE OF AN EXTREMIST PARTY
of English and Marathi, his rough eloquence, attracted followers. He
appealed to reactionaries by bitterly opposing the Age of Consent Bill,
and in his vernacular journal the Kesari (Lion) bitterly denounced all
Hindu supporters of that measure as traitors and renegades. He
, carried anti-foreign propaganda far and wide among Hindu school-
\ boys and students, and started gymnastic societies. His object was
) to stimulate hostility to "mlencchas" (foreigners), Muhammadan and
British. He took a leading part in directing a movement for repairing
the tomb of Sivaji, who first united Marathas against Muslim rule,
and for holding festivals in Sivaji's honour. A famine in 1896, and
'] the subsequent arrival in Bombay of bubonic plague, afforded an
opportunity for anti-government agitation. When calamities come,
the masses incline to blame their rulers; and anxious to arrest the
ravages of the plague, the provincial government prescribed methods
of segregation which were repugnant to popular habits. House-to-
house inspections were ordered; and British soldiers were employed
in Poona as search-parties for infectious cases. Bitter diatribes ap-
peared in the vernacular press; and on 4 May, 1897, in the columns
of the Kesari Tilak charged the soldiers with various excesses and
imputed deliberately oppressive intentions to the government and its
officers. On 15 June he published two remarkable articles. The first
represented Sivaji as wakened from his long sleep and horrified at the
state of his realm. He had established "swaraj" (his own kingdom).
But now foreigners were taking away the wealth of the country;
plenty and health had fled; famine and epidemic disease stalked
through the land. Brahmans were imprisoned ; but white men escaped
justice. Women were dragged out of railway carriages. He had pro-
tected the English when they were traders, and it was for them to
show their gratitude by making his subjects happy. Another article
gave an account of the killing by Sivaji of Afzal Khan, a Muslim
general, and expressed the opinion that great men were above the
common principles of morality. Sivaji had committed no sin in killing
Afzal Khan
for the good of others. If thieves enter our home and we have not sufficient
strength to drive them out, we should, without hesitation, shut them up and
bum them aUve. God has not conferred on mlencchas the grant inscribed on copper
plate of the kingdom of Hindostan. . . . Do not circumscribe your vision like a frog
m a well. Get out of the Penal Code, enter into the extremely high atmosphere
of the Bhagwat-Gita,^ and then consider the actions of great men.
Shortly after the appearance of these effusions W. C. Rand of the
Indian Civil Service, officer in charge of plague preventive operations,
and Lieutenant Ayerst, on plague duty, were assassinated in Poona
by two young Chitpavan Brahmans named Chapekar. The murderers
were arrested, tried, convicted and executed. They had founded an
association for physical and military training which they called the
* "The Lord's Song" in the sixth book of the MahabharaU.
REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN BENGAL (55 1^
*' Society for the removal of obstacles to the Hindu religion". Two
others of the associates murdered two informers, but were themselves
arrested, tried and executed. Tilak was prosecuted for exciting dis- ]
affection to the government by means of the Kesari articles of 1 5 June, t
and was convicted and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment,
six months of which were subsequently remitted. The Kesari, however,
continued to circulate. Its financial success attracted emulation, and
its tone was caught by other journalists. At the congress of 1897
Surendranath Banerjee from Bengal expressed these sentiments : " For
Mr Tilak my heart is full of sympathy. My feelings go forth to him
in his prison-house. A nation is in tears". Nowhere did Tilak's ,
methods and organisations attract more attention than in Bengal. =
His influence is plainly to be seen in the accompaniments of the
subsequent revolutionary movement in that province. His example
in brigading school-boys and students in gymnastic societies for pur-
poses of political agitation was followed there. Endeavours were even
made to introduce into Bengal, the very province which in pre-British
days had been scourged by Maratha raids, the singularly inappro-
priate cult of Sivaji. On his return from incarceration Tilak found
his position unimpaired, but for some years he remained quiet. The
circulation of the Kesari increased. He was biding his time.
Lord Gurzon's Partition of 1905, which split Bengal proper into
two and gave the Muhammadans numerical preponderance in the
eastern province, although expedient from an administrative point of
view, was strongly opposed by Hindu politicians and lawyers and
came at a peculiarly unfortunate time. In 1902-3 revolution had been
preached secretly among the bhadralok^ (respectable classes) by a
small band of conspirators. But although religious revivalists had
been at work among Hindus for some years, and Swami Vivekananda, ^
a Bengali who had visited the Ghicago conference of religions as a j
representative of Hinduism, had preached nationalism with religious j
tendencies, revolutionary doctrines intermingled with appeals to the ^
Hindu religion at first made no progress. Their opportunity came
later with the combined effects of the resounding victories of Japan
over Russia, the belief of the political class that Lord Gurzon's educa- ^
tional reforms were designed to cramp the expansion of their influence,
and Hindu resentment of the partition of Bengal. The anti-partition r
agitation with its vehement invective, its appeals to Hindu sentiment, I
its cry that Bengal as motherland, once rich and famous, had been '
torn in two despite the protests of her children, its proposals for
enforcing a punitive boycott of foreign goods and supplanting them
entirely by "swadeshi" indigenous products, its enlistment of students
and school-boys in picketing operations, gave ample cover for the
sedulous preaching of revolutionary doctrines. In Eastern Bengal, the
principal theatre of disturbances, the boycott with its accompani-
^ See p. 251, supra.
552 THE RISE OF AN EXTREMIST PARTY
ments of intimidation and terrorism, was vigorously opposed by the
Muhammadans and riots became more and more frequent. In both
Bengals it was constantly proclaimed that the government was setting
the Muhamijiadan^ against the Hindus. Hindu political sentiment
reache"d an unprecedented height of bitterness, and found ample outlet
in the press which it mainly controlled. Under cover of a storm of
passion, the revolutionists organised secret societies, collected arms,
and manufactured bombs. But their main objective was the "building
up" of popular opinion, the creation of a general atmosphere favour-
able to their schemes. They published newspapers and leaflets which
preached violence and omitted no calumny which could vilify the
British race. To get rid of the European was a religious duty. India
whose civilisation had been tarnished and corrupted first by Muslim
and then by British cruelty and oppression, would then recover her
ancient glory. Such exhortations were frequently supported by gross
perversions of history. For their initiates the conspirators, borrowing
ideas from Asia and Europe, prescribed a mixture of textbooks, the
Bhagavad Gita, the lives of Mazzini and Garibaldi, Russian methods
of revolutionary violence, military manuals and books on explosives.
The achievements of Japan were reiterated ; the importance of
spreading propaganda among the Indian troops was emphasised ; the
necessary funds if not obtainable from voluntary subscription, must
be extorted from "miserly or luxurious members of society". Such
doctrines spread rapidly among the Hindu youths and the discon-
tented teachers who thronged the far-flung, ill-managed, schools and
colleges of Bengal, among the numerous lawyers who found them-
selves idle and unhappy, among many young men who were dis-
satisfied with the meagre fruits of years of laborious study. It was not
long before they began to bear fruit in a network of underground
conspiracies, in a long, intermittent series of calculated crimes, of
bomb outrages, of "political dacoities", gang robberies practised on
helpless people in remote villages for the purpose of augmenting revo-
lutionary fundS; of secret murders, of assassinations of Indian police
officers ; and gradually an atmosphere of terrorism began to spread
over parts of Bengal. On 6 December, 1907, the train on which
Sir Andrew Eraser, the lieutenant-governor, was travelling, was
derailed by a bomb near Midnapur. On the 23rd of the same month,
Mr Allen, formerly district magistrate at Dacca, was shot in the back,
though not fatally, at a railway station. On 30 April, 1908, at
Muzaffarpur in Bihar, a bomb was thrown into a carriage in which
two ladies, Mrs and Miss Kennedy, were driving. Both were killed.
The bomb was intended for Mr Kingsford, a judge who had incurred
the displeasure of the revolutionaries. The murderers, two young
Hindus, were arrested within two days of the commission of their
crime. One, a student, confessed in court and was hanged. The other
shot himself dead on arrest.
FERMENT ELSEWHERE 553
In the meantime revolutionary conspiracy had been active in other
provinces.
Early in 1907 it became evident that the ferment in Bengal was
bearing fruit in the Panjab. The situation there at the end of April was
described in a minute by the lieutenant-governor. Sir Denzil Ibbetson.
Educated extremist agitators, he wrote, were openly and sedulously .
preaching an active anti-English propaganda in certain towns. In/
Lahore the propaganda was virulent and had resulted *'in a more or
less general state of serious unrest". On two occasions Europeans had
been insulted as such. Endeavours were being made to inflame the
passions of the Sikhs by exploiting unpopular agrarian legislation.
The police were being pilloried as traitors to their fellow-countrymen
and were advised to quit the service of the government. Similar
invitations were being addressed to Indian soldiers. Some of the con-
spirators looked to driving the British out of the country, or at any
rate from power, either by force or by the passive resistance of the
people as a whole. The method for bringing the government to a
standstill would be the working up of the bitterest racial hatred. The
situation urgently required remedy.
Riots occurred at Lahore and Rawulpindi; and the principal
agitators, Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh, were arrested and deported
under a regulation of 1818.^ The unpopular agrarian legislation was
vetoed by the central government and trouble subsided; but the
suggestion that the root of the trouble was agrarian was negatived by
the secretary of state, John Morley, who said on 6 June, 1907, in the
House of Commons that of twenty-eight meetings convened by the
Panjab agitators between i March and i May, twenty- three were
"purely political". All was quiet for a time till in 1909 a stream of
seditious literature issuing from Lahore necessitated further preventive
measures. In November, 1907, Lord Minto informed his legislative
council that not only had "disgraceful overtures" been made to the
Indian troops, but that seeds of sedition had been scattered even
among the "hills of the frontier tribes ".^
In Madras disturbances followed after a series of public lectures
delivered by an itinerant Bengal agitator, Mr Bipin Chandra Pal,
who declared that the British administration was based on "maya"
(illusion) , and after many inflammatory harangues of a local politician
Chidambaram Pillai. In the United and Central Provinces, which
under the firm and experienced administration of Sir John Hewett
and Sir Reginald Craddock presented an unpromising field for open
disturbance, there were seditious newspapers and secret burrowing.
In London an "India House" had been opened by Shyamaji
Krishnavarma, son of a Kathiawar merchant, who published a
* Defined by Lord Morley as "an emergency power which may be lawfully applied if
an emergency presents itself". Indian Speeches^ pp. 145-7.
* Lord Morley, op. cit. p. 57.
554 THE RISE OF AN EXTREMIST PARTY
paper called The Indian Sociologist. This "India House" soon became
notorious as a centre of a secret conspiracy; and its activities, tolerated
for years, ^ culminated in the murders of Sir William Gurzon Wyllie
and Dr Lalkaka at the Imperial Institute on i July, 1909.
The congress of 1 905 supported the boycott in Bengal. The president
^was Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a Ghitpavan Brahman who had acquired
considerable reputation as a politician, an educationist and a member
of the imperial legislative council. He complained that Lord Gurzon,
like Aurangzib, had caused bitter exasperation by a policy of distrust
and repression.2 Lala Lajpat Rai, a Lahore lawyer who subsequently
became prominent in the Panjab disturbances of 1907, congratulated
Bengal on a splendid opportunity of heralding a new political future
for India. At the congress of 1906 the president was Dadabhai
Naoroji, a Parsi and a veteran politician who had sat in the British
parliament. The boycott was justified and revocation of the partition
, was demanded. But in fact a split was only avoided by the adoption of
j **swaraj" as the goal of congress ambitions. To the soberer spirits, the
/ Moderates, this meant the establishment of a full parliamentary system.
To the irreconcilables, the Extremists, it signified absolute independ-
ence. It was Anglicised as the extension to India of the system of
government which obtained in the self-governing British colonies.
Appearances had been saved, but only just saved; and the Moderates
were very uneasy, as some at least were aware that, behind all the
whirlwind of passion in Bengal, revolutionists were busily organising.
As yet the government had shown no sign of perception of this funda-
mental fact. The exercise of its ordinary statutory powers failed to
check the unprecedented incendiarism which was going on ; and it was
not until the Indian Newspapers (Incitement to Offences) Act was
passed in June, 1908, that the most inflammatory of all the Galcutta
newspapers, the Jugantar (new era), was suppressed. The sanction of
the secretary of state to a measure of this particular kind was long in
coming. He justified it in these words :
An incendiary article is part and parcel of the murderous act. You may put
picric acid in the ink and pen, just as much as in any steel bomb. . . . To talk of
public discussion in connection with mischief of that kind is really pushing matters
too far.*
Why then, it will be asked, was the preventive action that was so
urgently needed postponed until two innocent English ladies had
7 Ipaid the penalty for prolonged tolerance of all this "mischief"? The
explanation is simple. The whole agitation was persistently minimised
by its friends in England; and "freedom of the press" is an English
maxim.
Throughout 1907 Moderate alarm increased. But some of the older
^ Report of the Sedition Committee^ paras. 5-7, 10-12.
• Gf. Ronaldshay, Life of Curzon, 11, 192, 390.
' Lord Morley, op. cit. p. 73. Gf. Ghirol, Indian Unrest^ p. 98.
CONGRESS SPLIT 555
men yielded to the growing frenzy for fear of being elbowed out by
their juniors, others were genuinely impatient of the tardiness of
constitutional reforms, and had not the tide been firmly stemmed by
such men as Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta, also a Bombay congress
man, who now refused emphatically to be dragged along at the heels
of their intemperate colleagues, the Extremists would have captured
the congress. As it was, when the time approached for holding the
1907 congress at Nagpur in the Central Provinces, the place of
meeting was altered, as a preliminary gathering of the reception
committee was broken up by a gang of Extremists. When the congress
gathered at Surat, the Extremists tried to achieve domination by force
but were stoutly resisted ; and dissolving in riotous scenes, the congress
severed itself from them. The Moderate leaders were Gokhale and
Pherozeshah Mehta from Bombay and Surendranath Banerjee from
Bengal. The last-named had long led the anti-partition agitation; he
had exerted himself to "give a religious turn'* to the boycott move-
ment, and to enlist the participation of students and school-boys; but
now, finding the pace too fast, he began to retrace his steps. The most
prominent irreconcilables were Tilak from Bombay and Arabindo
Ghose from Bengal. The Moderates remained in command of the
congress executive until in 191 6, after the death of Gokhale, when
the shadow of the war was lengthening over India, they joined with
the Extremists in the December meetings of that year.
Despite his exclusion from the congress, Tilak's prestige stood high '
in the Deccan in the early months of 1908. He commanded the
allegiance of many barristers, pleaders, schoolmasters and others. His
propaganda was filtering down to mill-hands in cities, who, gathered
together in huge tenements, by their density as well as by their
ignorance, provide a peculiarly accessible field to political agitators.
It was also penetrating to the headmen of villages. A movement had
been started for the creation of "national schools", independent of
state support and supervision, where revolutionary ideas could be
circulated without let or hindrance; and politics were intermingled
with temperance movements outwardly unimpeachable but in this
case subordinated to the promotion of racial hatred. On 1 1 May,
1908, the resultant situation was thus described by Sir George Clarke,
governor of Bombay :^ "A large number of half-educated Indians, who
can read and write English and have the smattering of knowledge
which is useless for any practical purpose, but is always apt to be
dangerous, seem to have become permanently hostile. These people,
inspired by a few men of much higher calibre, run the seditious
section of the press and work in schools, as public speakers, as travelling
missionaries, and as distributors of placards and pamphlets ".^ On
1 2 May and on 9 June, 1 908, Tilak published articles in the Kesari
1 Now Lord Sydenham, G.G.S.I.
^ Lord Sydenham, My Working Life, p. 222.
556 THE RISE OF AN EXTREMIST PARTY
representing that the Muzaffarpur murders resulted from oppression
and the refusal of swaraj. The bomb was the answer. "Bombs explode
when the repressive action of government becomes unbearable."
Tilak was prosecuted for attempting to bring the British government
into hatred and contempt, and for endeavouring to provoke enmity
and ill-will between different classes of His Majesty's subjects. He
was tried by an Indian (Parsi) judge of the High Court and a jury
which contained two Indians. He was convicted and sentenced to
six years' transportation, afterwards commuted on account of his age
and health to simple imprisonment at Mandalay. The character of
his offence was thus described by the judge :
You are a man of undoubted talents and of great power and influence. Had
those talents and that influence been used for the good of your country, you would
have been instrumental in bringing about a great deal of happiness for those very
people whose cause you espouse. Ten years ago you were convicted. The court
dealt most leniently with you then and the crown dealt still more leniently. After
you had undergone your imprisonment for a year, six months of it were remitted
on conditions which you accepted. ... It seems to me that it must be a diseased
mind, a most perverted mind, that can think that the articles that you have
written are legitimate articles to write in political agitation. They are seething
with sedition; they preach violence; they speak of murders with approval; and
the cowardly and atrocious act of committing murders by bomb not only seems
to meet your approval, but you hail the advent of the bomb in India as if some-
thing had come to India for its good. . . . Your hatred of the ruling class has not
disappeared during these ten years, and these articles deliberately and defiantly
written week after week — not written as you say on the spur of the moment but
a fortnight after the cruel and cowardly outrages committed on English women —
persistently and defiantly refer to a bomb as if it was one of the instruments of
p>olitical warfare. I say that such journalism is a curse to the country.
It is remarkable that in correspondence with Sir George Clarke,
Lord Morley expressed decided disapproval of the prosecution of
Tilak. Morally and legally justifiable, it was, he held, politically
unprofitable. He was apparently inclined to accept the view of
Gokhale, who was then in London, that it would "prove an ugly
discouragement to the Moderates".^ Looking back now over the
intervening years, we can see clearly that prosecution was not only
an absolute duty but an imperative necessity. Political Moderates
will naturally shrink from advising drastic action against former
associates. But it is not to them or to anyone else that a government
should turn for counsel at moments when its clear duty is to take
prompt action. But Morley was "born to be a thinker and a writer,
rather than a practical statesman".^
Tilak's conviction caused riots in Bombay which bore the impress of
careful organisation, but were speedily stopped. Its more lasting result
was a definite set-back to extremism in Bombay and indeed everywhere.
Meanwhile remarkable developments were taking place in Bengal.
On 2 May, 1908, two days after the Muzaffarpur murders, searches
^ Lord Sydenham, op. cit. pp. 224-5.
2 Kilbracken, Reminiscences, p. 184.
OUTRAGES IN BENGAL 557
were made in a garden and elsewhere in Calcutta resulting in the
seizure of bombs, dynamite, cartridges and incriminating corre-
spondence. A number of young bhadralok were brought to trial on the
information of an approver. Fifteen were ultimately found guilty of
conspiracy to wage war against the king-emperor. The plans and
doings of the conspirators were fully disclosed. For two years and
more they had launched on the public a highly inflammatory pro-
paganda; they had collected arms and ammunition; they had studied
bombs. The words of the judge who passed sentence on those con-
victed shows the extent to which the unbridled licence accorded to the
press had assisted their project:
There can be no doubt that the majority of the witnesses are in sympathy
with the accused I do not say with their motives, but with their objects; and
it is only natural that they should be. Their natural desire for independence was
not likely to be weakened by the constant vilification in season and out of season
of government measures, not only by the yellow press, but by papers which claim
to be respectable.
Outrages and murders were checked by but did not cease with these
convictions ; and other conspiracies came gradually to light. But the
cruel and inhuman nature of subsequent murders and "political"
dacoities (gang-robberies) did not deprive the perpetrators of the
sympathy of many impressionable Hindus, whose views were in 1925
accurately diagnosed by one who now holds high office in India:
I have reason to believe that the opinion is prevalent with very many people
that, although violence and terrorism will never bring a nation political freedom,
they are not bad instruments with which to weaken a government; in the words
of a leading article in an Indian paper recently, they are "the sappers and miners
of constitutional advance"; and it is claimed that their use is always followed
by advance.^
On 7 November, 1908, an attempt was made to shoot Sir Andrew
Fraser, lieutenant-governor of Bengal. Toward the end of the year
nine prominent Bengalis were deported. On 17 December, Lord
Morley announced his scheme of constitutional reforms.
The reforms were supported by the Moderates ; and in a speech at
Poona on 8 July, 1 909, Gokhale urged loyal acquiescence in British
rule, pointing out that self-government was an ideal for which Indians '
must qualify themselves. At Bombay on 9 October he strongly
denounced the active participation of students in politics which often
evoked in them a bitter partisan spirit injurious to their intellectual
and moral growth. Extremist teaching rightly inculcated patriotism
and self-reliance, but wrongly ignored all historical considerations in
tracing India's political troubles to a foreign government.
"Our old public life", he said, "was based on frank and loyal acceptance of
British rule, due to a recognition of the fact that it alone could secure to the
^ Sir Hugh Stephenson in the Bengal Legislative Council, 7 January, 1925.
558 THE RISE OF AN EXTREMIST PARTY
country the peace and order which were necessary for slowly evolving a nation
out of the heterogeneous elements of which India was composed, and for ensuring
to it a steady advance in different directions. The new system condemns all faith
in the British government as childish and all hope of real progress under it as
vain.. . .When one talks to young men of independence in a country like this,
only two ideas are likely to present themselves clearly before their minds. One is
how to get rid of the foreigner, and the other is how soon to get rid of him. All
else must appear to them of minor importance. . . . We have to realise that British
rule, in spite of its inevitable drawbacks as a foreign rule, has been on the whole
a great instrument of progress for our people. Its continuance means the continuance
of that peace and order which it alone can maintain in our country, and with
which our best interests, among them those of our growing nationality, are bound
up. Our rulers stand pledged to extend to us equality of treatment with them-
selves. This equality is to be sought in two fields : equality for individual Indians
with individual Englishmen and equality in regard to the form of government
which Englishmen enjoy in other parts of the empire. ... It is on our average
strength that the edifice of self-government must rest. The important work before
us, therefore, is to endeavour to raise this average."
Gokhale's determined abandonment of a facing-both-ways policy
was imitated by other Moderates, whose influence increased as their
attitude grew firmer. Revolutionary conspiracy in Bombay had been
purely Brahman and mostly Ghitpavan. It ceased with the recogni-
tion that the British government was obviously still capable, cal-
culable, and not in the least likely to abdicate. Ghitpavans are
practical men; and equalitarian ideals are obnoxious to all Brahmans.
Later on, when toward the close of 19 14, Tilak, who on release earlier
in that year had declared himself loyal to the government, endeavoured
to obtain readmission to the congress "in order to organise obstruc-
tion in every possible direction within the limits of the law", to bring
the administration to a standstill, and "compel the authorities to
capitulate" and grant self-government, but was unable to effect his
purpose.^ Nor did he return to the congress until Gokhale and
Pherozeshah Mehta had passed away. But in Bengal conditions were
different. There revolutionary conspiracy was not peculiarly Brahman.
Subversive ideas had been widely and industriously diffused among a
very imaginative and emotional class, the members of which were often
sufferers from unemployment or economic adversity. For centuries no
Hindu dynasty had governed the province; but Hindu sentiment,
quick to resent the slightest legislative interference with any custom
which could be represented as interwoven with religion, flowed deep
and strong. The abolition of sati,^ and the Age of Consent Act sixty
years later, had provoked clamorous protests from conservative Bengali
Hindus. Progressives too had their grievances, for Western learning,
often acquired with long and painful effort, had often yielded un-
satisfactory fruit.
Altogether there was a mass of discontent, social, political and
economic, which gave ample opportunity for revolutionary teaching.
* See a letter of Gokhale's quoted ap. Life of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, n, 654-6.
" See p. 142, supra.
EXTREMISM IN BENGAL 559
The conspirators had gained a long start and had spread their nets
widely. Murders and boycotting of witnesses and informers had
broken down some prosecutions and were building up terrorism. The
great water-country of Eastern Bengal was scantily manned with
British officers, and its administration generally was starved during
those critical years 1906-9.^ The views of numbers of imaginative
youngHindus regarding the British were moulded, not by any personal
contacts with individuals, but by scurrilous newspapers, distortions
of history and the idea that while a millennium was struggling
on the threshold, its entry was blocked by a foreign government. The
Press Act of 1910 at last effectively checked the poisonous flow of
printer's ink.^ But by that time enormous mischief had been
done, and outrages were being perpetrated which, in the words of the
government mover of the bill in the imperial legislative council, were
"the natural and ordinary consequence of the teaching of certain
journals".
Time has gone on. India's experience of extremism has widened.
The consequences of the events and movements described in this
chapter have become merged in the consequences of other events and
of movements which followed on the war. Through the first years of
that tremendous struggle extremism skulked in holes and corners.
Revolutionary conspiracies were met, baffled and suppressed by the
resolute action of the government. With subsequent events this
chapter is not concerned. In our own day by spreading abroad a
spirit of lawlessness and by sharpening animosities between various
sections of an immense society, extremism has gone far to make the
successful working of any parliamentary system in India for ever
impossible. But perhaps this is the object of some of its leaders for,
from the first, the movement has been chiefly Hindu. No orthodox
high-caste Hindu can really desire to see democracy established in
India.
1 See p. 252, supra.
2 Chirol, Indian Unrest, p. 99.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE REFORMS OF 1909
Lord GURZON'S departure from India towards the end of
1905 marked the close of a period of great administrative activity and
reform. But although so many functions of government came under
examination and were improved, organic change was noVtfnder taken.
Some Indian politicians indeed were inclined to suspect that more
coniplete efficiency would crush their hopes of a larger share in both
the legislative and executive direction of the country.^ In selecting
Lord Minto as a successor to Lord Gurzon, the conservative govern-
ment in England no doubt expected that his term of office would be
marked by a restoration of good relations with the educated Ipjians^
while it would be sufficient to watch the effects of the recenf altera-
tions and unnecessary to make others of much importance. Every-
thing in Lord Minto's previous career supported these hopes. His
chief administrative experience was as governor-general of Ganada,
a self-governing dominion, where he had shown great tact and power
of conciliation, but no desire to exceed his constitutional functions by
pressing his views about administrative details. Shortly before leaving
England he spoke of his future task and, borrowing a simile from the
^ turf, said that the best way to win a race was often to give a horse a
' rest between his gallops. And yet it was by his initiative that funda-
mental changes were carried through in the next few years.
In January, 1906, a liberal government with a large majority came
into power in England and Lord (then Mr) Morley became secretary
of state for India. Gurrents of political thought often begin as vaguely
as natural floods, and require careful direction if they are not to
develop into the devastating torrents of revolution. The aspirations
which had become more insistently expressed in the twenty-first
meeting of the Indian National Gongress at Benares in 1905 were to
be guided by a viceroy in India with a wide and varied experience
of many classes of men, and by a secretary of state of great historical
knowledge, but of a dictatorial habit tempered by a full realisation
of the difficulty of getting his views accepted by the House of Lords.
When Lord Minto arrived in India, his legislative council and the
councils in the provinces consisted {vide chapter xxix) of a small
number of members chiefly official or nominated, while only a few
had been recommended by elecdon. Their votes shaped legislaUon,
I but the budget had been passed before they discussed it, and, though
questions could be asked, no supplementary quesdons were permissible.
By the congress these arrangements had been criticised at their first
' Sir W. R. Lawrence, The India we served, p. 233.
CONGRESS DEMANDS
introduction, but other matters had attracted greater attention until
1904, when three specific claims were made to secure to Indians a
large share in the control of administration. One of these, borrowed
from the French colonial system, was directed to securing the repre-
sentation in the House of Commons of each province of India, and
it was subsequently dropped. A second demand was for larger repre-
sentation in the legislative councijs, with the right to divide these
bodies on all financial matters coming before them, while the third
was for the appointment of Indian representatives (to be nominated
by elected members of the legislative councils) as members of the
council of the secretary of state for India, and of the executive councils
of the governments of India and the governments of Bombay and
Madras. These claims were repeated and developed in the following
year. As early as March, 1 906, Lord Minto began to discuss privately
the third suggestion with the members of his own executive council,
believing that an executive partnership would be easier to establish
than a joint electoral body in the legislature. ^ So much opposition
was made to his proposal that he did not even put it forward in his
early correspondence with the secretary of state. On the wider
question of admitting more Indians to the legislative councils, his
first impression made him deprecate the importation of British institu-
tions, a feeling with which Lord Morley agreed, though at the same
time he argued that it was impossible inuany-advance to eseape-fi^^n
their spirit. ^ In June, 1906, Lord Morley made detailed suggestions
clearly based on the congress demands. Lord Minto's Canadian
experience had shown him how easily suspicions of dictation from
England are aroused, and he pressed that the public and official
initiative should come from India. He therefore addressed a minute
to a small committee of his executive council desiring it to examine
certain questions. Impressed as Lord Dufferin had been by the/
danger apparent in Indian conditions that any system of ordinary/
election might exclude representatives of important communitieSj he ^
named (in almost the exact language used by Lord Dufferln's com-
mittee) as interests which must be protected to secure a stable and
effective administration : the hereditary nobility and landed classes,
the trading, professional and agricultural communities, and the I
Fi 1 rnppalFr pTagg specific topics for J
discussion were the constitution of a council of princes or their
representation on the viceroy's legislative council, the appointment
of Indian members on his executive council, increased representation
on the imperial and local legislative councils, and the prolongation
of the budget debate, with power to move amendments.
While in Europe and America organic changes such as these are
freely discussed in the press, in periodicals and books, and on plat-
^ Buchan, Life of Lord Minto, p. 231.
2 Lord Morley, Recollections y 11, 1 73.
C H I VI 36
562 THE REFORMS OF 1909
/"' forms, the V>^rVi^^rrlnf^«;<^ nf p(|^^ratjnn in India makes it impossible
to obtain the keen and constructive criticism available in Western
countries. Few Indians even of the educated classes can read or
converse fluently in a vernacular different from their own. As
English is the ordinary means of communication between literate
residents in different language areas, details of important discussions
often escape the notice of men, well fitted to consider them, who do
not know that language.^ The burden thrown on the permanent
official of examining such schemes is thus heavy and frequendy causes
delay. While this preliminary examination was being made, the
congress held its annual session at Calcutta and for the first time
passed a resolution asking that the system of government obtaining
^ in the self-governing British colonies should be extended to India. The
first steps to be taken were those already described, but the proposal
that Indian provinces should be directly represented in parliament
was dropped. While the more intelligent Indian poliucians were
endeavouring to persuade or convince the responsible officials and
through them the British parliament that Indians were fit to exercise
substantially more authority than had hitherto beon conceded to
them, a small but active section noisily demanded complete freedom -
at once, and in the background was a growing number of individuals,
feeding their ill-taught minds with tales of oppression, and perverting
the minds of youths with distorted history and scraps of religion and
social service, in the hope of coercing the government. Advice on
revolutionary methods was supplied by Indians in London, and later
in Paris. In Bengal, where dissatisfaction had been caused by the
partition of the province, dangerous conspiracies were being hatched.
The public announcement by Lord Minto in the legislative council
in March, 1907, that he had addressed the secretary of state regarding
a liberal measure of reforms, was followed very soon by open displays
of violence m the Panja&T^ Xhe position became so serious that later
in the year an ordinance was made to regulate the holdings of
meetings, which were prohibited, if of a seditious nature, in the
Panjab and in Eastern Bengal. The trouble in the Panjab then
subsided, while in Bengal it grew secretly, and attempts were made to
spread the propaganda in Madras. Evidence of the harm done by
violent speeches at public meetings was so strong that in November
the ordinance was replaced by an act to enable seditious meetings to
be stopped. In the Bombay Presidency riots took place and Mr B. G.
Tilak was prosecuted and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment
for sedition. It was clear that the criminal law was not sufficient and
in June acts were passed giving power to forfeit presses which had
been used for incitement to commit certain violent offences, and
another to control the use of explosives on the lines of English law.
* Speeches made in vernacular at meetings of the congress are or were till recently not
rep)orted. 7 * For details of these see chapter xxx.
MINTO'S POLICY 563
In December a summary procedure for trial of seditious conspiracies
(which were liable to be unduly prolonged under the ordinary law)
was enacted, and power was taken to suppress associations formed for
unlawful acts. A number of Bengalis were also deported under the
emergency regulation of 181 8. While these measures were accepted
by Lord Morley as necessary, in his private correspondence with the
viceroy he showed his dislike for them and expressed his distrust of
the bureaucrat whom he believed to be always contemptuous of law
and clamorous for the violent hand.^ With too little regard for the
inflammable character of an Indian mob he criticised the sentences
passed on rioters in Bombay. ^
Since August, 1907, when the Government of India had consulted
local governments, and through them the public generally, examina-
tion of the scheme for reform had continued. Lord Minto's policy as
announced in the legislative council when the press and explosive acts
were being considered was to remain undeterred by outrages while
taking steps to prevent their continuance. His aim had always been ;
to deal, not with ambitions he considered impossible, but to give to 1/
the loyal and moderate educated classes a greater share in the govern- 1
ment of India. Lord Minto, at this stage, suggested the formation of I
advisory ^'^i^n.CJI'^ ^^ ^HHitinn tp the legislative councils. To some extent I
these resembled the first division in the enlarged councils proposed |
by Lord Dufferin. They were to receive no legislative recognition and
no formal powers but would meet when summoned to consider im-
portant matters, or the members might be consulted individually.
The imperial advisory council was designed to include a number of
chiefs, as questions were already arising which affected their subjects
and British Indians alike. Other members were to be substantial land-^
holders, and these with representatives of the smaller land-holders,
of industry, commerce, capital and the professional classes were to
compose the provincial councils. The scheme was described as in
accordance with the best traditions of oriental polity which recognised
that "the sovereign, however absolute, sHould make it his business to
consult competent advisers and should exercise his rule in accordance
with what, after such consultation, he deems to be the best mind off
the people".^ This part of the scheme was not favourably received.
Most of the chiefs declined to sit on a mixed council, and when
the Government of India sent its definite proposals to England, it
advocated an imperial council of chiefs only .f To the scheme for the
provinces opinion was more favourable, but was marked by diversity
in the matter of detail. It was natural that the professional middle
classes, supported also by many land-holders, pressed for a large'
statutory council, wholly or partly elected so as to represent various
^ Lord Morley, op. cit. ii, 257.
2 Buchan, op. cit. p. 276.
3 Dispatch of 24 August, 1907, para. 4.
36-2
564 THE REFORMS OF 1909
interests, and with wide powers of control over the government.
Such a project was entirely different from that conceived by the
Government of India which, as will be seen, was proposing to extend
the powers and constitution of the existing legislative bodies. The
final decision was that the head of a province who so desired should
form a small council of persons of some distinction and obtain its
advice when he wished to consult it. ^
In arranging for membership of the legislative councils, the necessity
of ensuring adequate representationji^iligiportant interests was borne
^ in mind. Failure of the system of 1892 in this respect was marked.
Of the persons recommended by electors for membership of the
imperial council 45 per cent, came from the professional middle
classes, only 27 per cent, were land-holders and not a single Indian
business man had been chosen. It was now proposed to admit
twenty-eight members by election, of whom twelve would be chosen
by members of the provincial legislative councils, seven by land-
holders in the principal provinces,^ five by Muhammadans, two by the
chambers of commerce of Calcutta and Bombay (whose membership
is chiefly European) and two by representatives of Indian commerce.
A reserve of three seats was kept for nominations of experts or of non-
official gentlemen to represent minorities, or special interests.
For provincial councils the scheme was similar. In provinces where
education was more advanced, election was to be made by members of
the municipal boards in the larger cities, by members of the boards in
smaller cities along with members of district boards, by land-holders,
by chambers of commerce, by the Indian commercial community, by
universities, by Muhammadans, and by representatives of special
interests where these existed, such as tea, jute and planting. In both
the imperial and provincial legislatures it was proposed to balance
almost exactly the number of officials and non-officials, leaving the
viceroy in the former, and the head of the province in the latter, to
exercise a casting vote. Burma was considered still unsuitable for a
system of election, and only one of the non-official members was to be
elected (by the chamber of commerce). In most provinces, as Lord
Dufferin had suggested twenty years earlier, elected members were
to be about 40 per cent, of the total council but in the Panjab the
proportion fell to twenty.
Legislative councils as constituted in 1861 were emp)owered to
discuss only bills actually before them. The act of 1892 had merely
^ extended the powers of the members to criticisejthej)udget and in
that connection to express their views on any matter without being
able to move amendments ui tcrt^ote. The Government of India now
suggested the grant of the' right to move resolutmns on <f^ihjprts of
public interest, and the^ightto divide the council on the budget.
* Dispatch of i October, 1908, para. 75.
* For a time one of these was to be nominated and not elected.
MORLEY'S SCHEME ^^^
Lord Morley declined ^ to sanction any advisory councils, on the
ground that the enlargements of the powers and size of the provincial
councils would give sufficient scope for the expression of views while
heads of provinces would always be able to consult persons whose
opinions and advice were valuable. He thought the scheme for a
chamber of princes was open to difficulties but promised to consider
any further proposals on this matter.
He accepted generally the proposals for numbers and constitution ^
of the provincial councils, with two reservations. While the Gk)vern-
ment of India wished to allow each interest to elect its own repre- ,
sentatives, he suggested an electoral college the members of which, '
chosen by the various interests, would be of such numbers that a
minority if unanimous could be certain of electing its own representa-
tives. He held further, in view of the restrictions on the powers of
provincial legislative councils under the act of 1861, that an official
majority should be dispensed with in their case, while it should be
substantial in the imperial council. Lord Morley accepted generally
the proposals for granting more freedom of discussion, and extended
these by allowing supplementary questions in addition to the right
of formal interpellation granted by the act of 1892. While in its
dispatch the Government of India had noted that the effect of its
scheme would be to throw greater burdens on the heads of local
governments, it refrained from proposing additions to the executive
councils already existing until experience had been gained of the
working of the new measure, and from recommending new executive
councils without the fullest consideration and consultation with the
heads of provinces to be affected. The secretary of state, who had^
already appointed two Indians as members of his own council, and
agreed to the appointment of an Indian on the viceroy's council,
brushed aside these notes of caution and decided to increase the
possible number of three members in Madras and Bombay to four,
one of whom should in practice, though not by statute, always be an
Indian. And he proposed to take power to form such councils in
provinces where none existed. Lord Dufferin's committee had sug-
gested the constitution of an executive council because they antici-
pated that enlarging the functions of the legislative council would
materially alter the character of the administration, while Lord
Morley appears to have been more impressed by the desirability of
introducing Indian members than by administrative needs.
On I November, 1908, the fiftieth anniversary" of fhe queen's
proclamation after the Indian Mutiny, a message to the Indian people
was published in the name of the king-emperor announcing the y
extension of-a:epicsuUativ'c insti^utioas, and the details were issued
publicly shortly after. They were well received in India where the
congress welcomed them as a large and liberal instalment of reform,
* Dispatch of 27 November, 1908.
^YsSe^^ THE REFORMS OF 1909
and Mr Gokhale in the following budget debate described the authors
as having saved India from drifting into chaos. An increase in the
numbers of elected members and greater facilities for debate had been
so confidently expected that the appointment of Indians to executive
councils appeared the greatest novelty. But there was keen debate
as to the class of person who would be selected. Active politicians
hoped that the choice might fall on them, but feared that men whom
they stigmatised as nonentities would be chosen.
The Muslim section of the community was, however, greatly dis-
satisfied with the suggestion that its representation should be secured
!by the device of electoral colleges. Muslim and Hindu are divided by
I differences of religious belief incomparably greater than the sectarian
variations of Christianity. Sacrifice of cows and bullocks and the
consumption of beef are intensely repugnant to the Hindu. These
practices and the clash of processions celebrating religious rites lead
to disturbances often accompanied by loss of life. For more than half
of the nineteenth century the Muslims had held back from the study
of English and thus had not fitted themselves for public life and office.
In Northern India especially, where they were numerous and till the
break-up of the Moghul Empire had been politically supreme, they
clung to their old traditions. A few years before the project for
, reforms had been launched, their minds had been agitated by a
/ demand of the Hindus in one province that the Arabic character
A? should no longer be used in the courts, and even that the language
should be altered. As soon as it was known that organic changes were
being discussed (October, 1906), a Muslim deputation approached
Lord Minto to press for ^^d^Quate representation both on local bodies
and on the council. They asked that Muslim representatives should
be elected by Muslim voters, and that the proportion of Muslim
members should not be fixed merely on the basis of the numerical
strength of the community. In replying Lord Minto went further
than Lord Dufferin had done. He agreed that their position should
be estimated, not merely on their' numerical strength, but in respect
to the pojitjral imp^Drtan^f^ of thr rommunitv and the -Service it had
rendered to the empire. He thought that any electoral representation
in India would be doomed to mischievous failure which aimed at
granting a personal enfranchisement regardless of the beliefs and
traditions of the communities comprising the people of that continent.
Previous experience had justified the Muslim apprehension. While
they formed 23 per cent, of the total population of British India, only
^y. 12 per cent, of the members recommended by election for the imperiaJ
council had belonged to this community. In the United Provinces,
with 14 per cent, of the population, the Muslims had never succeeded
in obtaining a single nominee by election. Some objections were
raised by Hindus to the initial proposals of the Government of India
for securing Muslim representation on the baseless ground that they
PARLIAMENTARY DISCUSSIONS "567
were an attempt to set one religion against another and thus to create ^
a counterpoise to the influence of the educated middle classes. But
the final proposals of the Government of India insisted on the im-
portance of adequate and separate representation for this community,
part of it to befscui^d'15y~arsepaFate electorate: .
There was little disposition in England to criticise the intended
enlargement of legislative councils and of their functions. Speaking
on Indian affairs in the House of Lords (30 June, 1908), Lord Gurzon
described such measures as only carrying^out thjejtraditionaJLpolicy of
the British in India, which no one would wish to retard. To broaden
the basis of government was the act of a wise statesman. But, referring [
to the disquieting reports of outrages in India, he pressed that changes '
should not have the appearance of having been extorted by force,
that they should not tend to weaken British rule, and that they should
be preceded by a resolute vindication of the authority of government.
Introducing the bill in the House of Lords in December, 1908,
however. Lord Morley foresaw that there would be grave discontent
with some of his proposals, and sought to avoid it. Every politician
or administrator of importance who has had to deal with the method
of government in India has deprecated the importation of British
institutions without discretion. Lord Dufferin, after setting out his
plan, had said :
From this it might be concluded that we were contemplating an approach, at
all events so far as the provinces are concerned, to English parliamentary govern-
ment and an English constitutional system. Such a conclusion would be very
wide of the mark, and it would be wrong to leave either the India Office or the
Indian public under so erroneous an impression.
Faced with the unmistakable nature of his own bill Lord Morley
assumed the necessity of defending his retention of an official majority "^
in the imperial council, a measure which beyond all others was outside
controversy, and he repudiated "almost passionately", as Lord
Gurzon subsequently said, the intention of mingling East and West.
If I were attempting to set up a parliamentary system in India, or if it could
be said that this chapter of reforms led directly or necessarily up to the establish-
ment of a parliamentary system in India, I, for one, would have nothing to do
with it.
On the second reading, however, his deep political convictions
prevailed, and he explained more clearly his reasons for suggesting
an advance which led obviously in the direction he professed to avoid.
Lord Gurzon, dealing with his own term as viceroy, described his aim
as being directed towards the progress of the people by the removal
of abuses, by adopting a just and sympathetic attitude towards them,
and by carrying outsocialijeforms.^ Political concessions were not
then in the field. While he was viceroy, he had been pressed at the
^ Hansard, 23 February, 1909.
/^
THE REFORMS OF 1969
instance of an Indian journalist to say that perhaps in fifty years India
might be self-governing. After long thought he had declined on the
ground thai it might embarrass his successor if he raised any hopes
or expressed any opinion as to \dign_ielf-government would come.^
He criticised those provisions in theTDill which went beyond the
proposals of the Government of India by giving up official majorities,
by enlarging and increasing executive councils, and by appointing
Indians to them. Lord Morley defended his scheme with the ardour
of a student of political history. Professing as much zeal for efficiency
as Lord Curzon he could not believe that any proposals could be true,
solid or endurable without concessions. He then quoted Lord Salis-
bury's warning against the introduction of occidental machinery into
India, to brush it aside with the remark that "we ought to have
thought of that before^we tried_nrriHpnt?\l education; we applied that
and occidental machinery must follow'*. The elective principle had-^
been introduced (though tentatively) by the act of 1892, and was
demanded to bring proposals into harmony with the dominant senti-
ment of the people in India. It is to be noted that, both at this time
and in all subsequent political movements, the Indian politician has
shown himself possessed of imitative rather than of critical or con-
structive faculties, and has never wavered in his demand for a system
^of government like that enjoyed by the self-governing dominions.
In the House of Lords the clause of the bill giving the government
power to create new executive councils was deleted at the instance of
Lord MacDonnell, who had himself held charge of three provinces.
Arguments against this power, which had not been immediately
recommended by the Government of India, and was known to be
opposed by most existing heads of provinces, were stigmatised by
Lord Morley as "good sound bureaucratic arguments but it was the
bureaucratic system they were going to make a breach in".
An overwhelming majority in the House of Commons replaced the
clause, but it was again modified in the House of Lords to create a
V council only in Bengal, where the late Sir Edward Baker, the lieu-
tenant-governor, had asked for it, and in other provinces only after
a draft proclamation had lain on the table of both houses of parliament
for six weeks and no hostile address to the crown had been carried.
In the House of Commons Earl Percy, who had been under-
secretary of state for India, questioned Lord Morley's hope that this
measure would induce the more moderate Indian politicians to
ab/in^<^" their dr^am of rnlnnial self-government. He did not object
to enlarging the councils and giving greater power of discussion,
which would make them more useful for advisory and consultative
purposes. But he opposed the power of initiating legislation, moving
resolutions (even though like resolutions in the House of Commons,
they were not to bind government) and the creation of non-official
^SSir W. R. Lawrence, The India we served^ p. 233.
DIVERSITIES OF RACE AND CREED ^569 '-
majorities in the provincial councils. Mr A. J. Balfour was impressed
by the religious dissensions, and though accepting the view that
representative institutions were the highest development as yet dis-
covered by the human race in dealing with its own affairs, held that y
they were suitable only where the population was in the main homo-
geneous, where a minority was prepared to accept the decision of the
majority, and where there was unity of tradition, general outlook,
and a broad view of national aspiration. He could not conceive how
India would ever be fit for representative government until the whole
structure of Indian society^underwent radical and fundamental
modifications. A few days later his remarks were echoed by an Indian
politician. 1 Discussing the ambition to build a united Indian nation,
he said :
Can we expect to achieve that ambition by obtaining political concessions
alone? Suppose all the seats in the executive council of the viceroy and those of
the governors and lieutenant-governors, when they come into existence, as we
hope and trust they soon will, were occupied by Indians — suppose all the members
of the supreme and provincial legislative councils were the elected representatives
of the people — let us go even further ahead and suppose that we attained the goal
of our aspirations, the colonial form of self-government; would all, without
purging the many social diseases that your body politic suffers from, convert you
into a united Indian nation?
Referring to the millions of ignorant and superstitious masses he said
that a handful of great men would never make a nation of them, and
"there is na"" process of legislation or diplomacy by which these
millions with all their diversities of caste and creed, could be fused
into a harmonious whole.. . ."
The prime minister's defence of the bill followed the lines of Lord
Morley's. Adopting almost the exact words of Lord Dufferin's
minute, he described it as not revolutionary, but merely an extension
and development nf ^' n st i ti 1 1\ nn «? whichhad been many years^in/,
operation and the extensionofwhich^iaSra^a^ contemplated.'
Educajdon -aH4 th£L^r£adj3f JxlfLasIiiuisLjno^^ the
people_i3LtLejCQiiiliry^^th government. There was a movement in
Asia for greater association of the natives of various countries in
passing laws and also in holding high executive positions. In England
also democratic feeling was strong and could not be resisted.
One topic which, though not affected by the bill, was much dis-
cussed during the debates, was the intention to appoint an Indian
member of the viceroy's executive council. Lord Morley, when intro-
ducing the bill, had announced that if, during his tenure of office,
there should be a vacancy, he would feel it his duty to tender to the
king his advice that an Iiidian should -be. appointed. He supported
his opinion by his experience of having had two Indian members on
his own council, and thus being in a position to get the Indian point
^ Pt. Moti Lai Nehru, Presidential address, United Provinces Social Congress at Agra
on II April. 1909.
/
^ (^o)/ THE REFORMS OF 1909
of view direct from them. Lord MacDonnell's objection was based
on the existence of strong religious dissension. A Muslim could not^
/ be appointed uiile55._a_Hiiid«-was also added, and a Hindu, unless
! he belonged to the class against which recent protective legislation
had been passed, would command no influence at all among his
co-religionists. At a later stage he agreed to the appointment of
Indians on the executive councils of the governors of Madras and
Bombay which had been in existence for a long period, though he
objected to the provisions of the bill which allowed such appointments
to be made without requiring the qualification of long service which
applied in the case of European members. On the other hand Lord
Cromer, arguing from his experience in Egypt, supported the appoint-
ment. He described India as in the almost unique position of being
the only important country in the world where education was con-
, siderably advanced, but which was governed in all essential particulars
/ by non-resident foreigners, and he thought it most desirable to gisso-_
ciate Indians with the administration. Earl Percy, having no doubt
knowledge Tif the excellt^iit qualifications of Mr (afterwards Sir S. P.
and later Lord) Sinha, went no farther than to press that the appoint-
ment should not be taken as implying that an Indian must always be
appointed, a suggestion which was obviously futile. Outside parlia-
ment there were louder protests, and Lord Minto, whose first desire
had been to obtain an Indian colleague, wrote to King Edward at
; this time urging that Indians, if fitted for high office, should (^ot^be.
debarred by race.^ Mr Sinha was appointed towards the end of
March, 1909.
The statute fixed the maximum number of nominated and elected
members at sixty for the legislative council of the governor-general,
at fifty in the larger provinces, and at thirty in the case of the Panjab
and Burma. The total membership of existing councils thus rose
from 124 to 331 and the number of elected members from thirty-nine
to 135, with majorities of non-official members (including those who
were nominated) in all councils except that of the governor-general.
Detailed regulations and rules for elections, and the conduct of business
in the legislative councils were to be framed in India, subject to the
sanction of the secretary of state, and the provision that they should
be laid before both houses of parliament. Some of the principles to
be followed in these had already come under discussion, especially
the question of Muhammadan representation. Lord Morley's scheme
of electoral colleges was strongly opposed by Muhammadans who
found it complicated and thought it likely to produce members who
would not really be representative. Rehgious intolerance was greatly
increased by misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the proposals.
The scheme finally passed gave Muslims a specified number of mem-
bers in a province based on their numerical proportion, varied in
* Buchan, op. cit. p. 286, and Lord Morley, op. cit. 11, 299, 301.
ELECTORAL METHODS 571
accordance with their political importance, and provided that these
members should be elected by Muslim voters only, who had certain i
qualifications. In other electorates no distinction was made, and it
was hoped (though the hope was not in fact realised) that the electors
in these would exercise their vote with no religious prejudice.
Great elasticity of detail was observed in arranging elections to
represent the oth^Ji^interests. The member for a division was chosen
by a system of secondary election. In the first place the members of
a municipal or district board met and selected a number of delegates
fixed according to the population of the town or district, and all the „.
delegates thus chosen in a division elected the member. Land-holders' v
representatives were elected in some provinces by land-holders paying ^
a minimum land-revenue, and in others by recognised associations.
Where it was not possible to form an electorate, e.g. in the case of
Indian commerce in some provinces, the interest was represented by^^
a nominated member. Voting was by secret ballot, and votes were
attested in most cases before the district officer, who also prepared
lists of voters, subject to claims and objections in constituencies where -^
electoral rolls existed. University members were elected by registered^
graduates who could vote personally or by sending votes by post.
There was some difference of opinion as regards the qualifications
of candidates, and especially in connection with the eligibility of men
who had been deported under the regulation of 181 8. Lord Morley
wished to give power to the Government of India to declare candidates
disqualified only after they had been elected, but Lord Minto pointed
out that the principles which the political training of years had ren-
dered dear to the people of England were totally unadapted to the
conditions of India. ^ A political prisoner who becomes a member of
parliament in England after his release in no way threatens the safety
of the constitution, while such a person in India might start a blaze.
This opinion prevailed and the regulations gave power to the
governor-general in council to declare that in his opinion a person
was of such reputation and antecedents that his election would be
contrary to the public interest. This disqualification and others due
to dismissal from the public service, certain orders by criminal courts,
and disbarring, could be removed by a similar declaration. In most
constituencies a substantial property qualification and the possession
of a residence or place of business within the constituency were
required. The age-limit was twenty-five years, and women were
specifically excluded.
Fears had been expressed that officials who had not been accus-
tomed to public speaking might be embarrassed in the crisp informal
debates which were expected to arise out of the permission to put
supplementary questions, as happens in the House of Commons.
These were, therefore, limited by allowing only the member who had
^ Buchan, op. at. p. 290.
572 THE REFORMS OF 1909
asked a question to follow it up. Existing limitations on the powers of
councils to deal with measures affecting the public debt and revenues,
religion or religious rites and usages, military and naval affairs, and
relations with foreign or native states were also imposed on the dis-
cussion of matters of public interest by way of resolution, and a similar
bar was laid on resolutions affecting the internal affairs of native
states, matters still being discussed between the Government of India
and local governments, and matters which were sub judice. There was
also a general power of disallowance on the ground that a resolution
could not be moved consistently with the public interests or that it
should be moved in another place.
An important difference between the budget procedure of England
and India existed at this period. While in England the government
decided on the measures it proposed to undertake in the budget year
and then varied rates of taxation in order to meet the cost of these,
in India taxation was not altered for considerable periods, and the
annual problem was to make the best use of existing sources of
income. Before 1909 estimates prepared for the provinces were sub-
mitted to the Government of India, minutely checked and often
altered, by the finance department, and incorporated in the budget
for the whole country. This was discussed in the imperial council, and
extracts relating to provinces in the provincial councils, but no resolu-
tions could be moved and no votes taken. The division of revenues
and control over various classes of expenditure between imperial and
provincial, which had been subject to periodical changes since the
first devolution in 1870, had now become quasi-permanent, and
in accordance with the recommendations of the Decentralisation
Commission meticulous alterations of the provincial estimates were
reduced. In the provinces a draft budget, after examination by the
Gk)vernment of India, which fixed the limit of expenditure on new
projects costing more than Rs. 5000 (;(^35o), was discussed by a small
committee of the council, at least half the members of which were
elected, and their views were considered. The draft for the whole of
India was then placed before the imperial council, members of which
could move resolutions affecting proposals for new taxation for grants
to the provinces, or items of imperial (but not provincial) expenditure.
Any changes made were communicated to and a similar procedure was
followed in the provincial councils. While in parliament a proposal
to increase expenditure is moved by a fictitious reduction, it was
provided in India, in order to avoid conventional discussions, that any
such proposal must be accompanied by a motion to reduce an equal
amount of expenditure in some other part of the budget. This device
failed in its object, and was sometimes embarrassing, as the govern-
ment was not informed beforehand whether the increase or the re-
duction was the main object of the mover, and it sometimes involved
a double debate.
CONGRESS CRITICISMS 573
No scheme of reform could stop or appreciably slacken the course
of sedition, and a series of outrages occurred throughout 1909. Lord
Morley's instincts were in favour of pacification, and as soon as his
bill was safely through the House of Commons, he warned Lord/
Minto that no more suspects could be deported, ^ and later in the year
telegraphed to say that the cabinet was unanimous in wishing for the
release of men already detained. The viceroy, with a keener apprecia-
tion of the movement, resisted, as he pointed out the real effect of the
reforms was that they had prevented moderate politicians from
joining the minority of extremists whose activities could be repressed
only by other methods. /
While the general scheme of the reforms as set out in the bill had
been highly praised by the moderate politicians in India in 1 908, the
detailed regulations were the subject of attack a year later in the"^
congress at Lahore. The separate representation of Muslims and the
scheme of direct voting aroused jealouscomments in a body which
chiefly comprised Hindus. In particular, the few cases (not as a rule
repeated in later elections) where Muslims were successful candidates
in constituencies open to all classes were particularly resented, and,
apart from the religious contest, members of the congress were dis-
appointed in not capturing all the seats allotted to representatives of
the district and municipal boards. Complaints were also made that
the non-official majority was nullified by the fact that it included
■^nominated members. Some of these criticisms were really directed
against the objects of the authors of the scheme, which had been to
secure a more effective representation of important interests than the
act of 1892 had_don€. Ibuccess m this aim was marked, and certainly
quickened the political sense of communities to whom public life had
been an opportunity for personal glorification rather than for civic
responsibility.
* Lord Morley, op. cit. ii, 308-9.
CHAPTER XXXII
POLITICAL MOVEMENTS, 1909-1917
r\TTENDANCE at the congress of 1909 in Lahore was much
smaller than usual, for a variety of reasons. The effects of the split in
the movement after the break-up of the meeting at Surat had not
subsided, and the more advanced section of the movement held aloof.
In the minds of the moderate leaders there was disgust at the crimes
which had been perpetrated during the year and some anxiety as to
their effect on future constitutional development. One of the first
measures to be placed before the new legislative council of the
Government of India was an act to control the press. It had been
recommended in a remarkable series of letters written by the rulers
of the Indian states in reply to Lord Minto, and the insufficiency of
the Newspapers Act of 1908 to control the poisonous flood of seditious
publication was abundantly clear from the evidence which had been
accumulated about conspiracies to commit murder and armed rob-
beries. Even in 1908, in a debate on that measure in the House of
Lords, Lord Cromer had admitted that, though he supported in India
the repeal of Lord Lytton's press act of 1878, the experience of twenty-
five years had convinced him that a policy of complete freedom had
not proved successful in either India or Egypt. A newspaper founded
at Allahabad in 1907 had had nine irresponsible editors, four of whom
had been convicted under the ordinary law and sentenced to long
terms for objectionable publications.^ The main principle of the new
act was supported by Mr Gokhale, who had recently warned students
against the attempts made to corrupt their minds. It was challenged
by only two non-official members, and passed on 9 February without
a division. It provided that the keepers of new presses must deposit
security before they opened them, and that this was liable to forfeiture
if the press was used to produce seditious matter. Forfeiture entailed
cancellation of registration, and, if it were proposed to reopen the
press, the security could be doubled. A second offence might involve
confiscation of the whole press. Similar powers extended over the
publishers of newspapers. Any person against whom an order of
forfeiture was passed might appeal to the High Court to set aside the
order, and the case was to be tried by a special bench of three judges.
This measure checked, though it was too late to stop entirely, the
progress of revolutionary activity, which continued to show itself by
murders and dacoities in Bengal especially. With the passing of the
act the Bengalis who had been interned were released, though one of
* Rowlatt Report, para. 120.
THE DELHI DURBAR 575
them was arrested six months later and convicted with a number of
other men of conspiracy, at Dacca and elsewhere, to wage war against
the king.
Between Lord Minto and Lord Morley there was now a divergence ''
regarding the method of dealing with the situation. In replying to
a suggestion for a general amnesty Lord Minto distinguished such
a measure from the clemency of former oriental rulers who were
autocrats and summary in their measures. He pointed out that the
influence of sentiment and imagination ''may bring grateful tears to
the eyes of the effeminate Bengali, or it may shock the spirited tradi-
tions and warlike imagination of more manly races''.^ It was signi-
ficant that shortly afterwards Mr Montagu in his Indian budget
speech laid stress on the powers of control over the viceroy vested in
the secretary of state, and claimed all the credit of the recent reforms
for Lord Morley and his council.^ So deeply had seditious teaching
penetrated that the prosecution of the Dacca conspiracy case did not
stop the increase in violent crime. Haifa dozen cases occurred round
Dacca in the second half of 1 9 1 o, and sixteen more during the next
year. In one of the latter the teachers and students of a national school
were implicated, and the school library was found to contain books
dealing with the lives of Tilak and Sivaji, and a garbled history of the
Indian Mutiny.
The list of crimes includes the murders of a witness in the Dacca
case and of several police officers. Bengali influence can also be
traced in Madras,^ where a revolutionary movement gathered
strength after lectures by a Bengali in 1907, and seditious publications
and conspiracies increased. When a newspaper closed at Madras,
owing to the conviction of the printer and publisher, it was again
issued from Pondichery in French India. The district magistrate of
Tinnevelly was shot dead in June, 1 91 1 , by a man who had been in
touch at Pondichery with Indians gained abroad.
The accession of King_Ge.nr.ge. Was marked in India by a dmiiar
at Delhi held by Their Majesties in person in December, (^gii/;^
Loyalty to the throne had not yet been questioned by any section in
India, and the visit confirmed and illustrated its strength. In a
gracious message His Majesty announced that the event of the
coronation would be commemorated by certain marks of especial
favour and consideration, which were later announced by the
governor-general. They were designed to impress the memory of the
occasion on the widest possible circles of the Indian public, from the
rulers of states, who were excused the payment of succession duties,
to the military and civil (subordinate) servants of the government who
^ Buchan, Life of Lord Minto, p. 305.
2 Mr Montagu quoted from the Statute of 1833 the powers of the Board of Control,
which were transferred to the secretary of state by the act of 1858. Mill, however, had
described the Board of Control as a deliberative rather than an executive body. Cf.
Buchan, p. 309. ^ Rowlatt Report, para. 153.
^Kye"^ POLITICAL MOVEMENTS, 1909-1917
received bonuses of pay, and to the masses by special grants for the
spread of popular education. Officers, men and reservists of the Indian
Army were made eligible for the receipt of the Victoria Cross, which
had hitherto never been granted to them.
A further act of great administrative importance, announced in the
name of the king-emperor, was the transfer of the seat of government
from Calcutta to Delhi, a former capital, whose history stretches back
to legendary times. At the same time the presidency of Bengal was
to become a governorship, and the territories of the existing provinces
of Bengal and Eastern Bengal and Assam were to be redistributed,
Assam being restored as a chief commissionership, and a new pro-
vince being formed under a lieutenant-governor with charge of Bihar,
Orissa and Chota Nagpur. As part of this new province had been
under council government, an executive council was also appointed.
In the minds of Indian politicians this cancelment of the partition
y/ of 1 905 counted for more than all the other concessions. Lord Morley,
though pressed on several occasions, had declined to reopen it, and
agitation had almost died down. It had indeed been regarded more
as a local matter than as one affecting the whole of India, and when
in the congress of 1906 the delegates from Bengal attempted to extend
the boycott of British goods and even association in government
work, such as holding the post of honorary magistrate, to other parts
of India, protests had been made.^ Success was, however, treated as
^1 a concessioTLlCLclamour, rather than to reasoned argument, and the
Muslim politicians resented the change. For in Eastern Bengal and
Assam their co-religionists numbered nearly 60 per cent, of the popu-
lation, and they had looked forward to holding a more important
share in the control of affairs than they were able to secure in other
parts of India where they were in a minority. They had also held aloof
from seditious activities and had supported the government, and an
impression was made that the change was partly due to violence.^
The congress of 1910 had elected as president the late Sir W.
Wedderburn, whose message had been one of conciliation between
officials and non-officia Is ^ bet wgen^Hindus and-Muslims, and between
moderate reformers and extremists. Though no formal resolution was
\ passed, a Hindu-Muslim conference met, and it was decided to con-
tinue attempts to reduce ill-feeling. All hopes of success were, how-
ever, extinguished by the action of a Hindu member who, though
opposed by his leader, moved a resolution on 24 January, 191 1, in the
^ imperial legislative council, asking the government tn ab^^^'sjii'^p^^^^^
. represen tation ^ whether in the councils, or in local bodies. This
attempt to reduce the security of their political influence embittered
the Muslims so much that even their disappointment at the reversal
* Indian National Congress Report, Calcutta, 1 907, pp. 87-9.
' *'A bitter jest 'No bombs no boons' was passed round among Mahomedans at Delhi."
Sir R. Craddock, The Dilemma in India, p. 147.
KHILAFAT AGITATION
577
of the partition was not immediately sufficient to make them combine
with the Hindus. A marked change was, however, noticeable in their
attitude towards the government, and especially in their public utter-
ances and in their newspapers. No Muslim had taken the place of Sir
Sayyid Ahmad who had died in 1898, and the younger men educated
at his college were beginning to chafe at the restraints imposed by
those who remembered his teachings of moderation and sobriety.
Their influence in the college was disruptive, and made it impossible
for the Government of India to accept the proposals framed to raise
its status to that of a university. Affairs in Europe and in Persia had
also excited them. The war between Italy and Turkey, the agreement /
between Russia and England regarding Persia, and still more the
Balkan War, had combined to arouse fears that independent Islamic
powers were in danger. Muslim opinion varies as to the right to
recognition as khalifa, or representative of Muhammad, since the
Mongols overthrew the Abbasid line of Baghdad in 1258, and when
Selim I of Turkey assumed the title in 1 5 1 7 Indian Muslims hardly
recognised it. When the Moghul Empire of India had been ex-
tinguished, however, the fact that a khalifa must enjoy temporal as
well as spiritual power led some sections of the Indian Muslims to
accept the khilafat of the sultan, and this increased their natural
sympathy with co-religionists during the Crimean War, though even
devout Sunnis, like Sir Sayyid Ahmad held that the institution had ^
lapsed in 1258.^ Twenty years later, Lord Lytton wrote to warn
Lord Salisbury, after the conference at Constantinople which took
place shortly before war broke out between Turkey and Russia, that
Indian Muslims were by no means indifferent to the fate of Turkey.^
In October, 191 2, war broke out between Turkey and the Balkan
states, and a medical mission composed of Irrdians was organised at
Delhi and dispatched to help the Turks, while the Red Crescent
(corresponding to the Red Cross) movement also received support.
A society was formed called the Khuddam-i-Kaaba, or servants of
the Kaaba, which aimed at arousing interest in maintaining the
integrity of the Turkish kingdom as responsible for the safety of the
sacred places of Islam. Drawing inspiration perhaps from the success
of the Salvation Army, it addressed its efforts to the humbler classes
of the community, who were invited to become members on payment
of a very small subscription, and were excited by inflammatory
addresses on the dangers besetting their co-religionists abroad.
An opportunity of testing the powers of agitation soon occurred.
Some street improvements at Cawnpore involved the removal of
buildings. It was found possible to avoid the demolition of a Hindu
temple standing in the middle of a new road which was being opened.
Close to it stood a small mosque, and it was proposed to remove an
^ Sir Verney Lovett, History of the Nationalist Movement in India, pp. 282-4.
2 Lady Betty Balfour, Letters of the Earl of Lytton^ 11, 64.
CHIVl 37
578 POLITICAL MOVEMENTS, 1909-1917
addition to the original building containing a room and a platform
on which ceremonial ablutions were performed. Religious jealousy
led to a demand that this should also be spared. Similar constructions,
and even whole mosques, had been demolished in the past without
complaint, but an agitation was fostered from outside and rapidly
grew. Stories of tortures inflicted on Muslims by the Balkan powers
were published, and the reoccupation of Adrianople by the Turks in
July, after Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria had begun to fight among
themselves, encouraged boldness in India. More than a month after
the room had been pulled down, a violent mob, after listening to a
sermon, rushed to the spot and began to pile up bricks. They attacked
the police, who were compelled to fire, causing some loss of life.
Agitation in the press was redoubled, especially in Calcutta and
Lahore and false rumours were circulated about the facts. Though
local feeling had calmed down, these narratives, as is not uncommon,
continued to excite people in distant parts of India. Lord Hardinge,
the governor-general, was so impressed by reports he received that he
decided to visit Cawnpore. There he announced a settlement of the
affair, which was in fact in accordance with the original plans for
improvement, viz. that the room should be rebuilt over an arcade
which extended along the street.
While the rearrangement of Bengal had contributed to the new
political activities of the Muslims, its effect on Hindus had not been
as sedative as had been hoped. Bengali politicians were gratified,
while the lawyers and traders of Calcutta, who had anticipated
1 material loss from the constitution of a new capital at Dacca, felt
relief. But to the virus of sedition, spread by the press, and by revolu-
tionaries in some of the private educational institutions with ill-paid
staffs, no antidote was afforded by a measure which did not affect the
persons engaged in spreading the poison. In December, 19 12, a bomb
was thrown in Delhi at Lord Hardinge who narrowly escaped with
his life, and throughout the next year revolutionary crime in Eastern
Bengal was marked by murderous brutality in dacoities committed
in order to obtain funds for revolutionary purposes. It has been
observed^ that between 1906 and 19 10 prices rose to an extent which
had not been known since the Mutiny, and that the literate classes
who furnished revolutionary recruits were hit harder than the agri-
culturists.
In other parts of India the influence of the Bengali revolutionaries
showed itself, partly by imitation, and partly by direct incitement.
A club modelled on the Anusilan Samiti (society for the promotion of
culture and training) at Dacca was started at Benares in the United
Provinces in 1908 by young Bengali students who are numerous in
that city. Its founder aimed at making it a school of sedition, and was
instigated by members of the revolutionary party in Bengal. The
^ Sir Bampfylde Fuller in United Empire^ 1910, p. 559.
WORKING OF THE NEW COUNCILS 579
methods followed, however, alienated a number of members who did
not approve its political activities and hostility to the government.
Subsequently the more active members seceded and formed a fresh
association, which throughout 191 3 was in close touch with Bengal.
In the Panjab the deportations of 1907 had been followed by calm
for some time, but the bomb manual prepared in Bengal was received
there, and a Panjabi student, who had been in England and had
come under the influence of Krishnavarma, started propaganda and
then left for America, whence he subsequently attempted to organise
ghadr (mutiny) in India. Some of his pupils got into touch with a
Bengali employed in the United Provinces and organised the spread
of seditious literature extolling the attempt on Lord Hardinge's life.
A bomb placed by this association near the European Club at Lahore
caused the death of an Indian in May, 191 3. In Bihar a particularly
revolting murder was committed to obtain funds for revolutionary
purposes by two youths from Bombay, who had been excited by the
inflammatory journals of the Bombay Brahman clique, and by lectures
on the Bengal "martyrs".
The working of the new legislative councils was examined in
chapter rv of the Montagu-Chelmsford report.^ One unforeseen
result of the enlargement of the non-official element was that it was
found necessary to curb the criticism of government measures by
officials within the councils, and to prevent provincial governors from
using their councils to question orders passed by the secretary of state.
Non-official members were able to influence legislation, not so much
by debate when bills were actually before the councils, as in the
previous discussions, or in select committees. In India it had been
customary to publish proposals for legislation as widely as possible
and obtain criticisms of these before bills were introduced, ^ and in
one province special provision was made to employ members of the
council in this manner. The right to move resolutions was freely used
and its effect on government action may be estimated by the fact that
out of 168 resolutions moved in the imperial council to the end of
191 7 about seventy-three were fructuous. Questions were also freely
put, though many of these were to elicit information already easily
available or statistical information of no real public value.
During this period an attempt was made to constitute an executive
council in the United Provinces,^ Sir John Hewett, the lieutenant-
governor, had reported in 1909 that the work coming before him in
the United Provinces was not sufficiently heavy to justify the con-
stitution of such a body, and that it would be difficult to obtain
suitable Indian nominees, as non-official Indians had little experience
of administrative business, though capable men were available. He
* Gd. 9109 of 1918.
2 Lord Curzon (Ronaldshay, Life of Lord Ciirzon, ii, 1 04) disliked this system, as different
from what he was accustomed to.
* Pad. Papers (House of Lords), 1 914-16, sessional no. 49 (vm, 5 sqq.).
37-a
58o POLITICAL MOVEMENTS, 1909-1917
\ did not agree with the considerations pressed upon him by the Govern-
ment of India, which regarded the secretary of state's views as final.
The new councils would increase work in some directions, but should
relieve it in others, and it was premature to anticipate future needs.
After a long experience in the Government of India he could not say
that public business was discussed widi more discrimination by a
governor in council than by a lieutenant-governor without one.
Executive councils were desired by Indian politicians for several
reasons. They wished the heads of provinces to be selected from men
in public life in England rather than firom the Indian Civil Service,
and the Decentralisation Commission had pointed out that councils
would be necessary if this change was made.^ Government by council
was considered a superior form, and in any case the constitution of a
council would admit one or two Indians to new high offices. In reply
to a resolution moved in the imperial legislative council, 24 January,
191 1, the Home Member said that the practical test was whether the
head of the province could cope with the work and the Government of
India would not move in the matter while Sir John Hewett was
lieutenant-governor.
Two years later a similar resolution was moved in the local council
and Sir James (now Lord) Meston, who had followed Sir John Hewett,
declined to accept it on the formal ground that his views could not be
published until the Government of India and secretary of state had
considered the question. In forwarding a report of the debate he took
the same view of the state of work as Sir John Hewett. But he thought
it advisable to meet the demand on the ground that it would steadily
grow and was bound to be conceded in time. Opinion in the Govern-
ment of India was divided. Three of the civilian members, and (at the
time the decision was taken) the commander-in-chief were opposed.
One of them pointed out
that Sir Edward Baker, who was the only lieutenant-governor [in 1909] in favour
of having a council, sent up proposals for the distribution of work, which reduced
his council to a position subordinate to himself and struggled to retain in his
hands powers which the Government of India considered incompatible with
council government.^
. The dissentients were all impressed by the bitterness of feeling between
^Jlindu RnH Muslim in northern India and "by the lack oi experience
of council government in provinces under lieutenant-governors. The
majority considered that council government was a natural conse-
quence of the increase in work and greater complication in adminis-
tration, and, impressed by Sir James Meston's advice, supported the
proposal. This was accepted by Lord Crewe, the secretary of state,
and a draft proclamation was laid before both houses of parliament.
An address to the crown was, however, carried against it in the House
of Lords on 16 March, 191 5.
* Report^ pp. 154-5. » Minute of Dissent by Sir Harcourt Butler.
INDIANS IN THE COLONIES 581
Another matter which engaged public attention was the treatment '
of Indians in the dominions and crown colonies, which had long been
a source of grievance, and the position in South Afiica was particularly
complained of.^ Before the Boer War it had been the cause of re-
monstrance with the Boer government. In 1900 and again in 1901
the congress passed resolutions calling attention to the matter, but
even after the war crown colony administrations did nothing to
remedy the disabilities, which were indeed increased. Restrictions
were most severe in the Free State which had completely excluded
Indians, and in the Transvaal where they were not permitted to own
land and had to live in special localities. In Natal, where the largest
population of Indians was found, a licence fee had been imposed on
Indians who had entered the colony as indentured labourers, if they
remained at the end of their term of service, and on their children as
they became adolescent. Political franchise was taken away in 1896
on the ground that it was not enjoyed in India, and there were
proposals to abolish the municipal franchise, and to stop licences in
order to get rid of all Indians. Gape Colony was more reasonable,
and Indians there had fewer grievances though these were still
appreciable. In 1907 the new responsible government in the Trans-
vaal passed acts to prevent the ingress of Indians not already domiciled
there and to compel registration of all Indian residents.
Mr M. K. Gandhi, an Indian barrister, who had visited South
Africa on legal business in 1 893 and had remained there to assist his
fellow-countrymen in resisting oppressive measures, organised a move-
ment of passive resistance, which he was later to repeat in India. ^
Sympathetic agitation began in India where the discussion of ad-
ministrative reforms was already exciting men's minds, and the
Indian government supported the claims for more liberal treatment.
The home government found it difficult to reconcile the undoubted
rights of Indians as British subjects, and those of South Africans to
whom the Union Act of 1909 gave full powers of self-government.
Colonies like Natal had found Indian labour useful in agriculture and
unskilled occupations. But the Indian labourer at the end of his term
of service was engaging in trade (usually as a small shopkeeper) and
in market-gardening where he came into competition with the lower
classes of European origin. There was some apprehension of large
numbers of competitors arriving, if all restrictions were removed.
Most important of all, it was feared that if Indians were admitted
freely and obtained the franchise, it could not in time be refused to
the indigenous races who would then swamp the predominating
influence of the white population.
In 1 910 the Government of India decided to stop the recruitment
of indentured labour for Natal from the following year. The British
^ See Keith, Imperial Unity and the Dominions, 1916, pp. 202 sqq., where full references
are given. 2 Doke, M. K. Gandhi, 1909.
582 POLITICAL MOVEMENTS, 1909-1917
government then pressed the Union to repeal the Transvaal Act of
1907 and to consider milder legislation, which was introduced and
passive resistance ceased in 191 1. There was, however, long delay and
in 1 91 3 Lord Hardinge, the governor-general, spoke publicly on the
undoubted grievances of Indians in a manner which was resented,
though unreasonably, in South Africa. The same year an act was
passed which made admission subject to the ability to read and write
in a European language, though it was still possible to declare any
person or class of persons unsuitable on economic grounds or on
account of the standard or habits of life. There were also limits on the
admission of wives or offspring of persons not following a rule of
monogamy. Some discussions in 191 2 had been attended by Mr G. K.
Gokhale,^ a prominent Indian politician, and the Indians believed
that the repeal of the licence tax in Natal had been promised, but this
was not in the act. A fresh resort to passive resistance led to serious
riots and many prosecutions, followed by a commission of enquiry,
which led to some remedial measures.
At the outbreak of the war in 1914 revolutionary activity was still
continuing in Bengal, though slightly checked by the active police
measures taken against it. Muslims, especially in northern India, had
been worked up to oppose the government, and their younger politicians
showed a disposition to identify their aims with those of the congress.
In March, 191 3, indeed, the All-India Muslim League had adopted
as its ideal the attainment of self-government of a kind suitable to
India, and had been pressed by some members, though without success,
to adopt the congress formula of a "system of government similar to
that enjoyed by the self-governing members of the British Empire and
a participation by them in the rights and responsibilities of the empire
on equal terms with those members ".2 The first important event,
however, was connected with an agitation differing from these. The
ghadr movement in America^ had been widely advertised among
Indians in that country by a newspaper bearing the same title as the
movement. From the United States it spread among the Sikhs and
other Indians in British Columbia, who had a grievance arising from
the local immigration rules. Some of them visited the Panjab and at
public meetings obtained the passing of resolutions of protest against
the rules. Early in 1914a Sikh who had been in business in Singapore
and the Malay states chartered a ship and conveyed 373 Indians to
Vancouver. As most of them had not complied with the rules, the
authorities forbade their landing. Revolutionary literature which had
been conveyed on board added to the resentment caused by the
failure of the plan, and the passengers were landed near Calcutta, in
September, 1 9 1 4, in an angry and rebellious spirit. The government had
* Mr Gokhale's speech, Bankipur Congress Reporty 191 2, p. 53, gives an excellent account
of the Indian side of the controversy.
* Appendix B, Congress Report of igo8y Madras, 1909. • Gf. p. 579, supra.
SEDITION IN THE PANJAB 583
enacted an ordinance to regulate the ingress into India of emigrants
of this description, and provided a train to take the passengers to the
Panjab. They refused to enter it, and a riot with loss of life occurred,
as many of the rioters were armed with revolvers. Some of those who
had escaped, joining emigrants who returned later, then committed
a series of violent offences, mainly designed to obtain funds for revo-
lutionary purposes. A Bombay Brahman reached the Panjab in
December with offers of Bengali co-operation (including a bomb
expert), and a general rising was planned to take place in February,
1 9 15. This was frustrated. By this time forty-five serious crimes had
been committed in five months. There was evidence that most of the
conspirators were ignorant peasants, who had been corrupted by the
movement in America. The Defence of India Act was passed and rules
made under it for the summary trial of revolutionary offences by a
strong bench of judges, with no preliminary commitment and no
appeal, and for the internment of suspects. Though a few offences
were committed later, firm action soon had its due effect, and the
leading Sikhs, proud of the achievements of their caste fellows at the
fi'ont, co-operated with the government to restore confidence. Con-
nected with the main conspiracy in the Panjab was a similar movement
at Benares, which grew out of the revolutionary club described above, ^
and aimed at co-operation in the general rising planned in the Panjab.
It was detected and some of the chief conspirators were convicted.
Just as the political movements in Bengal and Bombay had produced
undercurrents of violent crime and sedition owing to the manner in
which they had been pushed, so did the ill-balanced khilafat agitation.
War against the allies had been declared by Turkey, but even this
had no sobering effect on the wilder spirits in India. Their devotion
to the khilafat of the sultan was strengthened by the revolt of the
Sharif of Mecca, which became known in June, 191 5, and they were
not moved by his explanation that he had been impelled to it by the
action of the young Turks. The allies had guaranteed the sanctity of
the sacred places of Islam, but a section of Indian Muslims professed
to believe that these were in danger, and the government found it
necessary to warn their leaders.
A number of young students left their colleges at Lahore in February,
191 5, and crossed the border to join a small body of fanatics in tribal
territory who had for nearly a century maintained a spirit of opposi-
tion to the British. Some months later a Sikh convert to Islam, who
had been attempting to promote sedition in a Muslim religious school
in the United Provinces, also visited the fanatics and then proceeded
to Kabul. With the help of a Turco-German mission he hatched an
absurd plot for overthrowing the British government in India and
setting up an alternative government, in which some of the students
were to hold high rank. More serious than this was a conspiracy set
^ Gf. p. 578, supra.
584 POLITICAL MOVEMENTS, 1909-1917
on foot by the ghadr party in America, who sent emissaries through
Bangkok into Burma. There they communicated with two Muslims
who had been members of the Red Crescent Society and had been
helping in medical aid in Turkey during the Balkan War. An
Indian regiment was then corrupted and ready to mutiny, attempts
were made to seduce the large force of military police in Burma, and
other outrages were planned.
German influence had been at work even before war was declared.
As far back as 191 1 or earlier, the Indian revolutionaries in America
had been in touch with German agents and had been propagating
the doctrine that Germany would attack England. After war broke
out Indians were employed in propaganda, in attempting to seduce
from their allegiance Indian prisoners of war, and in plotting an
attack on Burma from Siam. They soon made contact with the
Bengali revolutionaries, and schemes were formed to land arms in
the Bay of Bengal, or to smuggle arms from the far East.
The rebellion in Ireland at Easter, 191 6, once more directed the
attention of Indian politicians to that country and an agitation for
Home Rule was vigorously pushed by Mrs Besant, the president of
the Theosophical Society, and by Mr Tilak. Her publications caused
the government of Madras to require security under the Press Act
for her press, and later this was forfeited. In September she formally
launched a Home Rule League, and the excitement which was caused
by her agitation led to the issue of orders under the Defence of India
Act, forbidding her to enter Bombay and the Central Provinces. Her
movements in Madras and political activities were further restricted
in June of the following year.
While the judicious use of the Press Act was effective in stopping
the wide circulation of pernicious literature, and the powers given by
the Defence of India Act enabled the government to check revolu-
tionary crime, its action was subjected to criticism. A press association
for India, which had been constituted in 191 5, approached Lord
Chelmsford, the governor-general, in March, 191 7, asking for the
repeal of the Press Act. The arguments were that the law had been
enacted as a temporary measure, the necessity for which had passed
away, that the safeguards provided were illusory, and that it was
oppressive and hindered genuine literary enterprise as well as the
proper rights of the press to criticise the acts of the government.^ Lord
Chelmsford had little difficulty in showing how baseless these claims
were. 2 When the act was introduced, the hope was expressed that
the need for it would not be permanent, but none could predict how
long an interval would elapse before public opinion ceased to tolerate
an intemperate press. A chief justice, who had called attention to the
latitude of discretion allowed to the executive authorities, had also
^ Speeches by Lord Chelmsford, Simla, 1919, i, 248.
* Idem, p. 266.
THE ROWLATT COMMITTEE 585
said that " a jurisdiction to pronounce on the wisdom or unwisdom
of executive action has been withheld and rightly withheld", and
though he had been of opinion that any appeal against forfeiture
must be illusory, another High Court had held that it was qualified
to question the verdict of the local government. The statistics showed
how moderate and efficacious action had been. While 143 newspapers
had been formally warned once, subsequent warnings were needed
less frequently and the security of only three had been forfeited. Of
fifty-five presses warned thirteen had had their first security forfeited
and only one its second. Not a single order of forfeiture had been set
aside by a High Court, though the view taken by the local govern-
ment of specific articles had not always been upheld. During six
years after the act was passed there had been a marked increase in the
number of newspapers, periodicals and presses. Lord Chelmsford
quoted many examples to show that the baser elements were still
extolling political crime in terms which must, in the view of a High
Court judge, encourage excitable young men to commit similar
offences.
At the Lucknow Congress in 19 16 a resolution was moved ^ pro-
testing against the extensive use of the Defence of India Act and the
Regulation of 181 8, and asking for further precaution against misuse.
A year later a committee was appointed by the Government of India
to report on the revolutionary movement and to advise legislation to
enable the government to deal effectively with it. The committee,
which was presided over by Mr Justice Rowlatt, an English judge, and
included two judges of Indian High Courts, an Indian lawyer, and
a senior executive official, traced the course of criminal conspiracies
in a report^ which for the first time brought before the public the
extent to which sedition had been spread. It showed how in Bombay
the movement had been largely confined to a single caste, while in
Bengal the chief actors had been educated young men of the middle
classes. In most parts of India their efforts to gain recruits had soon
failed, though for a time they had caused death, injury or loss of
property to many Indians, and, if not checked, would have been
dangerous to the state. The committee suggested that the ordinary
law should be strengthened in a few details, and that wider provisions
should be enacted which would cover emergencies, but would not
take effect unless the governor-general in council declared the
existence of a state of affairs justifying such action. Reluctance in the
past to ask the legislative council for unusual powers had allowed
sedition to spread till it became a menace, and it was judged wiser
to prepare for the future. A committee of two High Court judges who
examined in 191 8 the records of more than 800 persons detained at
that time without trial under various provisions, found that detention
^ Congress Report, Allahabad, 191 7, p. 109.
2 Sedition Committee Report, Calcutta, 1918.
586 POLITICAL MOVEMENTS, 1909-1917
was still justified and were able to recommend the release of only six
persons. A proposal to shelve the report, moved in the imperial
legislative council in September by a non-official member, was
supported by only two members.
In January, 1919, two bills were introduced to carry out the pro-
posals of the Rowlatt committee. These suggestions had been con-
demned by the congress of 191 8 at Delhi. ^ The legislation was
strongly opposed by non-official members of the council who pressed
that it should be postponed for consideration by the councils to be
elected under the reforms which are described in the next chapter.
A virulent campaign of misrepresentation was set on foot, and the
wildest rumours were circulated as to the effects of the new laws
The acts were passed, but release from the strain of war and the
excitement of a new constitution had an unbalancing effect which
led to lamentable riots in Delhi, Ahmadabad, Lahore and Amritsar.
Indian politicians were beginning to forget the history of their own
country, a long tale of autocracy, interrupted only by periods of
anarchy, and in their eagerness to grasp at the share in administration
offered under a milder personal rule, they failed to show the restraints
that characterise successful democracy.
^ Congress Report, Delhi, 1919, p. 100.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE REFORMS OF 1919
An his presidential address to the congress at Bombay in 191 5,
Sir S. P. (afterwards Lord) Sinha brought to a focus the vague
aspirations of Indian politicians which had been quickened by the
disturbances of a year's warfare. Few of the members of the congress
belonged to the castes which supplied recruits or officers to the army,
but all of them admired the deeds of Indian soldiers and pressed for
wider opportunities of enlisting and training. A few years earlier,
a French writer^ had noted that the attitude of the British govern-
ment towards nationalist desires in India was not clearly defined.
Sir S. P. Sinha urged with eloquence, and at the same time with
moderation, that the goal should be stated, and a reasoned ideal of
the future of India set before its youth who had been educated or, as
Lord Morley put it, "intoxicated with ideas of freedom, nationality
and self-government". Like Lord Morley he believed that a national
and inspiring ideal would arrest corrupting influences. At the same
time he warned his hearers that the advance towards complete self-
government must be along a path which was long and devious. This
need for caution and patience was repeated by the president of the
All-India Muslim League which in 191 5 for the first time met in the
same town as the congress, and exchanged visits. Lord Hardinge,
who had gained the respect of Indian politicians by his bold advocacy
of the claims of Indians to better treatment in the dominions and
colonies, had also advised them to study patience in their aspirations
towards self-government. ^ To some of the congress speakers who had
not yet lost the intoxicating effects of their education these warnings
appeared chilling and unnecessary.
Lord Chelmsford succeeded Lord Hardinge as viceroy a few
months later and appears to have been impressed, as Lord Minto had
been, by reasonable demands made temperately. At the first executive
council he held he propounded two questions: "what is the goal of
British rule in India?" and "what are the steps on the road to that
goal?"^ Sir S. P. Sinha, quoting well-known aphorisms of American
and British statesmen, had asked that Indians might look forward to
self-government, and Lord Chelmsford and his advisers speedily came
to the conclusion "that the endowment of British India as an integral
part of the British Empire with self-government was the goal of
British rule". The second question was more difficult of solution.
^ Chailley, Administrative Problems of British India, p. 165.
* Sir Verney Lovett, The Indian Nationalist Movement, p. 103.
* Speeches by Lord Chelmsford, Simla, 1919, i, 389.
588 THE REFORMS OF 1919
Foremost among the radical changes suggested by the congress was
the grant of provincial autonomy. On the recommendations of the
Decentralisation Commission there had been some relaxation of
control by the secretary of state and by the Government of India. In
their dispatch of 25 August, 191 1, recommending the repartition of
Bengal, the Government of India had referred to the first demand of
Indians for a larger share in government and suggested that the
solution would appear to be
gradually to give the provinces a larger measure of self-government, until at last
India would consist of a number of administrations, autonomous in all provincial
affairs, with the Government of India above them all, and possessing power to
interfere in cases of misgovernment, but ordinarily restricting their functions to
matters of Imperial concern.
This momentous suggestion, put forward as an argument to justify
the removal of the Government of India from Calcutta where it was
closely associated with the government of Bengal, was completely
ignored in the reply of the secretary of state. The omission, due no
doubt to the urgency and secrecy with which it was necessary to
dispose of the other large issues, was unfortunate and had to be
remedied later, when Lord Crewe in the House of Lords pointed out
that no decision had been arrived at.^
Apart from a wish for the abolition or reform of the secretary of
state's council, and reconstruction of relations between the secretary of
state and the Government of India, the other desires expressed by the
congress followed on the lines laid down ten years earlier — expansion,
reform, and reconstruction of legislative and executive councils, and
a liberal measure of local self-government. Lord Ronaldshay (now
Marquis of Zetland) in his Life of Lord Curzon has described the pro-
posals of the Government of India (which have never been published
in full) as follows i^
In their representations to the secretary of state the Government of India had
been careful not to commit themselves to any specific form of self-government.
The special circumstances of India, they pointed out, differed so widely from those
of any other part of the empire that they could scarcely expect an Indian con-
stitution to model itself on those of the British dominions. All that they contem-
plated was a larger measure of control by her own people which would ultimately
result in a form of self-government and differing possibly in many ways from that
enjoyed by other parts of the empire, but evolved on lines which had taken into
account India's past history and the special circumstances and traditions of her
component peoples. Their proposals for assisting her towards this goal were,
briefly, to confer greater powers and a more representative character upon
existing local self-governing units such as district (rural) boards and municipal
councils; to increase the proportion of Indians in the higher administrative posts,
and to pave the way for an enlargement of the constitutional powers of the
provincial legislatures by broadening the electorate and increasing the number
of elected members.^
^ Hansard, 24 and 29 June, 191 2. ^ Vol. m, p. 165.
' This summary agrees closely with a formula drawn up by Sir Reginald Graddock,
then Home Member of the Government of India, in 1916, printed at p. 262, Gd. 123 of
DECLARATION OF 191 7 589
Sir Austen Chamberlain, who was then secretary of state, was
sceptical of the value of these proposals. He was not prepared to be
more precise in the matter of a formula "than to avow an intention
to foster the gradual development of free institutions with a view to
self-government". In regard to details he criticised the increase in
the number of elected members of a legislative council without giving
them any real control. While discussion of the method of advance was
remitted to committees in India and in England for examination, the
question of a formula was pursued. Mr E. S. Montagu, who had
succeeded Sir Austen Chamberlain, produced a draft resembling his
predecessor's views, ^ and this was redrafted by Lord Curzon in its
final form as follows :
The policy of His Majesty's government, with which the Government of India
are in complete accord, is that of the increasing association of Indians in every
branch of the administration, and the gradual development of self-governing
institutions, with a view to the progressive realisation of responsible government
in India as an integral part of the British Empire.
The formula continues with a statement that progress can be achieved
only by successive stages, controlled by the British government and
the Government of India, which must be guided by the co-operation
received, and the extent to which it is found that confidence can be
reposed. Immediately after the announcement of this policy in
parliament, a controversy arose as to the interpretation of the phrase
"responsible government". Lord Curzon and other statesmen had
always accepted Lord Morley 's assertion that the scheme of 1 909 was
not intended to lead to a parliamentary form of government in India,
though they feared it would have that effect. A year later, when it was
pointed out to Lord Curzon that his formula led in that direction he
was shocked, but the conclusion was irresistible. Lord Morley himself,
at a later stage, when the new proposals had been developed, saw no
objection to them on this account, and admitted that his disclaimer
had been due to the difficulty of obtaining the consent of the House
of Lords to his own scheme. ^
While these discussions took place privately at Simla and in
Whitehall, Indian politicians were drafting their own proposals.
A society known as the Madras parliament^ drafted a "Common-
wealth of India" act which suggested the constitution in provinces
of legislative assemblies. Three members were to be elected in each
district by persons qualified to vote in elections for local bodies ; each
chamber of commerce and trades association was to elect two mem-
bers, and landed proprietors paying land-revenue not less than
^ Ronaldshay, Life of Lord Curzon^ in, 167.
2 See letters to The Times, 3 November, 1928 (Sir R. Burn), 9 November (Sir Theodore
Morison) and 1 7 November (Sir R. Burn) .
2 This was connected with Mrs Besant's Home Rule League (chap, xxxii, p. 584),
which subsequently split into three, vide questions 1439, 1692 and 2142, evidence before
Joint Select Committee.
590 THE REFORMS OF 191 9 .
Rs. 250 were to send six members. Considerable minorities were to
be represented in proportion to their number. The parliament of
India was to consist of 200 members elected half by members of the
provincial assemblies, and half to represent the landed, trading,
commercial, financial and industrial associations, with a member
from each university. Separate representation was to be provided for
important minorities. After a period of ten years a more democratic
system was to be devised. A cabinet of ten members was to include
five appointed by the viceroy and five elected by parliament. Nine-
teen of the elected members of the Indian legislative council made
similar suggestions in October, 1916.^ In November representatives
of the Muslim League and the congress came to an agreement at
Calcutta, which was confirmed by meetings of both bodies at Luck-
now a month later. This scheme provided a legislative council of 125
in a major province, or fifty to seventy-five in a minor province, four-
fifths of the members to be elected directly by voters on a wide
fi*anchise. The imperial council was to include 1 50 members with the
same proportion elected, partly by the elected members of the pro-
vincial councils and partly direct. Except in regard to certain
specified heads of income and expenditure which were reserved as
imperial, the provincial councils were to have full control, though
the imperial council could deal with matters in regard to which
uniform legislation for the whole of India was desirable, and a vague
general power of supervision and superintendence was reserved for
the Government of India. At the head of each province there was to
be appointed a governor who should not ordinarily be a member of
a permanent service. Half of his executive council were to be Indians
elected by the elected members of the provincial council. All legisla-
tive councils were to elect their own president. There was to be more
freedom in the putting of supplementary questions, and motions for
adjournment were to be permitted. Resolutions passed were to bind
the government unless vetoed by the governor in council, and if passed
again after an interval of not less than a year were to be absolutely
binding. The most striking feature of the scheme was, however, an
agreement that Muslims should be represented through special
electorates in certain specified proportions, which substantially ex-
ceeded their share of the population in provinces where they were in
a minority. This was subject to a proviso that they should not, as
they did in the Morley-Minto scheme, also have an opportunity
of obtaining seats in electorates other than their own. Another
qualification was that opposition by three-quarters of the members
of either community (Muslim or non-Muslim) to a bill, a clause of
a bill, or a resolution affecting that community would block it com-
pletely.
A further contribution to the attempts to solve the problem was due
^ Speeches and documents on Indian Policy y ii, 1 16.
ROUND TABLE SCHEME 591
to the "Round Table" group of students of politics, some of whom
had previously played a part in bringing about the union of South
Africa in 1909. When war broke out in 1914 they had been examining
the question "how a British citizen in the dominions can acquire the
same control of foreign policy as one domiciled in the British Isles".
In 191 5 they began to examine the case of India, and felt that Indians
could not be invested with responsibility for imperial policy until
they had some responsible share in their own government; and early
in 191 6 the late Sir William Duke, who had been a member of council
in Bengal, and was then on the Council of India, drew up a note as
a basis of discussion. In that he suggested that certain departments
and functions might be administered by some form of responsible as
distinct from merely administrative government. Mr L. Curtis, a
member of the group, arrived in India in the autumn of 191 6, and
for a year was engaged actively by correspondence and conference in
examining and testing this suggestion. Though his intention of forming
groups representing all shades of opinion to study the problem was
frustrated by the malicious distortion of a phrase in a private letter
which had been abstracted and published, his studies attracted much
notice. A recent writer^ has criticised the use of the term "responsible"
in the declaration of August, 191 7, as vague and capable of various
interpretations. Mr Curtis pointed out that an alternative expression
"self-government" was used in India in at least four senses, and early
in 191 7 in a published letter to the people of India he expressed his
belief in a policy of the gradual conferment of responsible government,
which he defined as meaning that the final authority in Indian affairs
will have been transferred to an Indian parliament. His proposal for
the immediate future was to begin by constituting elective assemblies
with an executive consisting of members able to command a majority
in the assembly. As existing provinces had taken shape merely
through administrative convenience and contained very large popu-
lations often speaking different languages, and even subject to different
laws, he suggested that smaller, more homogeneous areas should be
carved out, in each of which a responsible government would be
formed. Only certain functions of government, for example, public
works, primary education, local self-government, etc., would be
entrusted to these bodies, and the rest would remain under the control
of the old provincial governments, to be transferred gradually and
not necessarily at the same rate in all areas. The general outlines of
this scheme were commended in an address from a number of in-
fluential Europeans and Indians to the viceroy and secretary of state,
towards the close of 191 7. It was, however, not approved by the
congress, which then met at Calcutta and reaffirmed its desire for
the plan it had passed a year before, with complete provincial
autonomy and half the executive councillors of the viceroy elected.
* Sir R. Craddock, The Dilemma in India, p. 169.
592 THE REFORMS OF 191 9
The resolution urged strongly that while this first instalment should
be granted at once, the statute to be passed should also lay down an
early time-limit within which full responsible government should be
granted, without even the slender precautions included in the
congress plan.
Instead of appointing a royal commission to take evidence and
draft proposals for carrying out the reform briefly announced in
August, 191 7, the government deputed Mr E. S. Montagu, secretary
of state, with a small committee (the Earl of Donoughmore, Sir
William Duke, Mr Bhupendranath Basu and Mr Charles Roberts,
M.P.), to consult the Indian Government and politicians. Such a
method has the obvious defect that it prevents the public discussion
of matters which are complicated and benefit by ventilation, and
criticism, among men of widely different temperaments. On the
other hand it produces a scheme more quickly, and, the ground
having been prepared, a report was signed by Lord Chelmsford and
Mr Montagu within six months from the date on which the latter
arrived in India. It contains an admirable account of political con-
ditions in India, coloured in parts by optimistic hopes of the effects
of democratic experiments on a collection of people divided by race,
sect and religion, who from time immemorial had known no method
of rule but autocracy before the cautious association of Indian with
British legislators which has been described. The report analysed the
meaning of responsible institutions as Mr Curtis had done, and sug-
gested that the first step to be taken was to introduce partial responsi-
bility in the provincial governments. The Government of India was
to remain, as it had been hitherto, responsible through the secretary
of state to the British parliament, though measures were suggested to
give greater opportunities for independent criticism of its actions and
projects. In many respects the congress scheme was held to be
unsuitable. Full provincial autonomy was premature. Election of
members of the executive council by the legislative council was
without any reputable precedent, and their responsibility to the
electors in constituencies could be secured in other ways. The proposal
to give to the councils complete control over provincial finance and
legislation was impossible until the executive was entirely responsible
to them. To make a government amenable to resolutions amounted
to controlling the executive by direct orders on points of detail, and
would lead to confusion.
If responsibility in provincial governments were to be clear from
the beginning, two methods were possible, excluding the congress
scheme, which demanded a complete grant. Mr Curtis's scheme set
up legislatures with executives responsible to them which were to deal
with specified functions in the areas under their control, other func-
tions being performed by the old provincial governments. The report
objected to this as likely to lead to excessive friction and to prejudice.
MONTAGU-GHELMSFORD REPORT 593
It therefore suggested that the head of each province, who was to be
a governor in all cases, should have an executive council consisting
of two members, one of whom should invariably be an Indian. The
governor in council would deal with certain reserved functions of the
government. Other subjects would be transferred to the governor
acting with one or more ministers chosen from the elected members
of the legislative council. It was not intended that in relation to his
ministers the governor should at once occupy the position of a purely
constitutional governor, bound to accept their decision, but he was
expected to refuse assent to their proposals only when the conse-
quences of acquiescence would be serious. A hope was expressed that
the executive would cultivate the habit of associated deliberation, and
would present a united front. Such discussion might in fact be com-
pulsory as a decision on either a reserved or a transferred subject
could affect the part of the government which was not concerned with
the decision. A list attached to the report suggested subjects which
might be transferred, the most important being taxation for provincial
purposes, local self-government, education (except university), medical
and sanitary, agriculture, public works (except major irrigation
works), and excise.
In addition to this vital change in executive government, the report
suggested large increases in the non-official membership of the legis-
lative councils, with direct elections wherever possible. Separate
(communal) representation was condemned as inconsistent with
democratic government, though it was to be tolerated in the special
case of Muslims. Lord Morley's disclaimer of an intention to pave
the way for a parliamentary system in India was haltingly explained
as due to his insistence on the sovereignty of the British parliament
and his acceptance of Lord Minto's advice that only limited con-
stituencies and indirect franchises were possible, and it was admitted
that the reformsjofj^o^jnovedtowards the stage atwETclTaquestion
of respoTisiBle'governrnent was bound to presentTfseIi7 More freedom
to local bodies was recomme^ndred7and parlfament was warned that
the grant of greater freedom to governments in India would involve
a relaxation of its own control.
Published in England and India in July, 1918, this report drew
much criticism. The moderate politicians and the big land-holders
were the only sections to approve of the dual principle in provincial
governments. The former also asked that the same system should be
introduced in the Government of India, and the latter claimed special
representation for themselves, and that further progress should be
directed to changing the status of leading land-holders to that of ruling
chiefs. Extreme politicians held by the congress scheme, and desired
full responsibility in the provinces, with the governor a purely con-
stitutional official in relation to his ministers. Official opinion which
was strongly opposed to the system of dyarchy (a term revived to
c H I VI 38
594 THE REFORMS OF 1919
apply to the dual form of provincial government) has often been
misrepresented as a reluctance to give up place and power. It was
due to the natural pride of a body of men in charge of a complicated
machine of government to the perfecting of which they had devoted
the best part of their lives, and which they honestly believed to be
endangered if its working were abruptly transferred to inexperienced
hands. Even in the transition stage they believed that the proposals
would establish an oligarchy which would not in the most favourable
conditions work smoothly with the official side. The heads of pro-
vinces, some of whom had severely criticised dyarchy, were summoned
to Delhi to formulate an alternative scheme, and five of them in
January, 191 9, signed a minute formulating it. On the vital question
of dyarchy the opinion was expressed that the report had improperly
emphasised the doctrine of responsibility, and that it was more correct
to put an increased association of Indians in the foreground, as could
be inferred from the wording of the announcement of August, 1917-
The alternative suggested was an executive council with an equal
number of officials and non-officials, the latter to be selected from
elected (in the Panjab also firom nominated) members. There was to
be no division of functions, and government would thus be unitary,
it being left to the governor to distribute portfolios among the members
of his executive council. Such a scheme, as was admitted in the
minute, fixed no responsibility on individual members. It provided
for later expansion only by increasing the number of functions en-
trusted to non-official members, by increasing the number of the
latter class, and by gradual disuse of the arbitrary powers of over-
ruling his council entrusted to the governor in both schemes during
a transition period. The crux of the problem was thus the meaning
of the announcement. Two heads of provinces (Lord Ronaldshay and
Sir E. A. Gait) felt that to reject the wider interpretation in the report
would be treated as a breach of faith and therefore accepted it as the
most reasonable scheme which had been suggested. Both the Govern-
ment of India^ and the home government, which had issued the
declaration, held strongly that it was essential to begin the fixing of
responsibility, and preferred the dual scheme of the report to the
alternatives suggested.
Vague statements in ancient texts have sometimes been relied on
to show that Indians were not unused to personal representation by
election. Among the lower castes of Hindus social and religious
questions affecting a particular caste, or more often a section of it, are
frequently decided by a small popular assembly of the caste or section.
Headmen of villages, or parts of villages, who in North India
collected the land-revenue and arranged for the necessary expenses,
were also chosen by the people themselves. But the matters thus
arranged were circumscribed and of a personal rather than a civic
1 Gd. 203 of 1919, p. I.
JOINT SELECT COMMITTEE 595
nature. The caste council is judicial, and the headman the managing
director of a company. In the various systems of government which
the British found working in the eighteenth century, there was no
element of popular government in the occidental sense. Local self-
government had since made a beginning, and the direct election in
a few constituencies under the Morley-Minto scheme, especially those
of Muslims, had given a little experience. In accordance with a sug-
gestion in the report a special committee, presided over by Lord
Southborough, toured in India to enquire into the framing of con-
stituencies and the settlement of franchises. Proposals were placed
before this committee by the local governments, based on the
material conditions of the population and on the facilities for polling
which varied widely. In rural tracts the object was to get the sub-
stantial well-to-do peasant as a voter, and the franchise varied from
province to province or even within a province. For certain classes,
and in particular the lowest castes, it was found impossible to arrange
by election, and one limitation on the franchise was the need for
framing it so that votes could be polled by the staff available.
A bill embodying the scheme of the report was introduced and
examined by a joint select committee of both houses of parliament
from July to October, 191 9, presided over by Lord Selborne. It
examined^ about seventy witnesses representing various shades of
opinion and thus to some extent remedied the previous defect in
publicity. 2 In a report of great value the committee pressed strongly
the argument that a generous opportunity must be given to the people
of India of learning the actual business of government and of showing,
by their conduct of it, to some future parliament, that the time had
come for further extension of power. The act was quickly passed and
became law on 23 December, 1919.^ It changed the status of the
heads of the United Provinces, the Panjab, Bihar and Orissa, the
Central Provinces and Assam from that of lieutenant-governor to
governor, and provided an executive council for each. Though no
change was made in the maximum number of members admissible
(four) it was understood that ordinarily there would be only two, and
it was provided that only one instead of two must have been for at
least twelve years in the service of the crown in India, so that the other
could be an Indian. Responsibility was partially introduced in the
provinces, as suggested in the report, by giving the governor power
to appoint from among the elected members of his legislative council
one or more ministers, to hold office during his pleasure. Rules could
be made dividing the functions of government for two purposes. One
was the distinction of subjects into "central ", which were controlled
1 Cd. 97 (1919) and Cd. 203 (1919).
2 Lord Sydenham, a member of the committee, has pointed out {My Working Life,
p. 370) that no Indian who could not speak EngHsh was called, so that the rural and working
classes, the land-holders and fighting races were not heard.
2 9 and 10 Geo. V, c. loi.
38-2
596 THE REFORMS OF 1919
by the Government of India, and "provinciar', while the other
divided provincial subjects into "transferred", which were placed in
the control of the governor acting with his ministers, and "reserved",
which were to be disposed of by the governor in council. In the
reports both of Mr Montagu and Lord Chelmsford (para. 221) and
of the joint select committee (clause 6) the greatest possible stress was
laid on the necessity for joint deliberation by the two parts of a
provincial government. However careful the separation of trans-
ferred and reserved subjects may be, some overlapping is inevitable.
Thus a restrictive policy of excise (transferred) may raise serious
questions of law and order (reserved). Even where there is no such
intimate contact, free discussion between experienced officials and
ministers in close relation with the elected members of the legislative
council was likely to lead to accommodation. Where it was doubtful
into which category a topic fell the decision was to be made in
accordance with rules. After discussion, however, the order issued
was to bear on its face a clear indication showing that it was the
decision of the governor in council or of the governor acting with
his ministers. So far as public action in the debates of the legislative
council was concerned, the select committee advised that members
of the executive council should act together, and similarly ministers
should act together. Where both sections of the government were in
agreement members and ministers should be free to speak and vote
for each other's proposals. There should, however, be no compulsion
on a member or minister to support by speech or vote a proposal
made by the section to which he did not belong, if he disagreed
with it.
Important changes were made in the matter of supply and legisla-
tion. As explained elsewhere,^ an Indian budget at this period did not
require an annual finance bill as in England, because rates of taxation
were altered, especially so far as they affected provincial revenues,
only at comparatively long intervals. Discussion in the legislative
council was thus chiefly concerned with a proper allocation of
existing revenues. From the enlargement of the popular element in
these provincial bodies, larger demands for expenditure, especially on
the transferred subjects, were inevitable, and two problems arose for
decision. The first was the question whether provincial revenues
should be definitely allocated between the reserved and transferred
sides, forming what was called in the later discussions "the separate
purse", or whether the purse should remain joint, and the needs of
each side of the government decided annually. Mr Montagu and
Lord Chelmsford favoured the latter method (para. 256) while the
Government of India were strongly in favour of a separate purse,^ such
as had been familiar in India as between the central and provincial
governments. Indian non-official witnesses, before the joint select
* P. 572, supra. Cd. 123, p. 28.
FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS 597
committee, preferred the joint purse and it was suggested^ that this
was because they hoped that through it the ministers could exercise ,
more influence over the reserved subjects. Briefly the question was
whether greater acerbity would be caused by a public division of
funds for a term of years, or by an annual discussion within the
government. Faced by this difficulty the committee recommended a
joint purse, holding that ordinarily common sense and reasonableness
would bring about agreement. ^ If the governor at any time found
serious disagreement between his executive council and the ministers,
he was to have power to make an allocation. This, however, was to
be made, not by a division of sources of revenue, but by apportioning
definite fractions of the total receipts and the balance. The committee
emphasised a warning that the budget should not be capable of being
used by ministers or a majority in the legislative council to direct the
policy on reserved subjects. The decision in favour of a joint purse
was unfortunate. Indian popular opinion has always regarded the
treasury as containing unlimited funds, which would be made
available if the jealousy of its guardians permitted, and the sense of
responsibility would have been quickened by a definite provision of
sources of income, with the knowledge that, if they did not suffice,
fresh taxation would be necessary.
The second problem was that of the responsibility for new taxation.
In the report (para. 257) it was suggested that after any contribution
payable to the Government of India had been set aside, and full
provision made for the reserved subjects, the balance should be at the
disposal of the ministers. If it were not sufficient, the onus would lie
on ministers to suggest new taxation. The Government of India
showed that this might bring about the impossible situation that
ministers would have to propose taxation which was really required
for expenditure on reserved subjects although they did not approve
of it, the alternative being that the transferred subjects in which they
were deeply interested would not receive the funds they needed. This
was, in fact, one of the chief arguments in favour of the separate purse.
The matter was not discussed by the select committee which appears
to have covered it by expressing general confidence in good will, and
the recommendation that power should be taken to make a division
of funds in case of need.
There remains the question, how the executive government of a
province was to secure the passing of legislation or the voting of
supplies which it considered necessary for the reserved services.
Various alternatives are discussed in the joint report (paras. 247-53),
such as the passing by the Indian legislature of bills rejected by a
provincial legislature, or the making of ordinances by the governor-
general, alone or in council, or by the provincial governor. All these
were rejected as savouring too much of the autocratic methods which
* Question 7002. ^ Clause i.
598 THE REFORMS OF 1919
were being superseded. Where a governor had doubts of his ability
to get through the council a bill dealing with a reserved subject which
was of importance, he was to certify that it was a measure "essential
to the discharge of his responsibility for the peace or tranquillity of
the province or any part thereof, or for the discharge of his responsi-
bihty for the reserved subjects". Such a bill after introduction and
discussion would be automatically referred to a grand committee
numbering 40 to 50 per cent, of the council and partly elected by the
elected members of the council. The governor would have power to
nominate a bare majority, exclusive of himself, but not more than
two-thirds of the nominated members could be officials. Although
most of the governments in India approved of this scheme, it was
strongly opposed by the government of Madras which pointed out
that the non-official nominees of the governor would be subject to
strong pressure by opponents of a measure and would be in a most
difficult and invidious position.^ It suggested that where a bill of
vital importance was rejected or modified, the government should
have power to return it to the legislative council for reconsideration,
and subsequently the governor might set aside amendments which
were not acceptable to him and declare the bill to have passed. The
late Lord Carmichael, who had been governor of Victoria, and of two
presidencies in India, strongly supported this method ^ of fixing re-
sponsibility on the governor personally, instead of using the obnoxious
official bloc with additional nominees of uncertain stability, and the
joint committee accepted the change (clause 13). Similarly it sug-
gested that the governor should have power to restore a provision for
a reserved subject in the budget which the council had reduced and
which the governor considered essential for proper administration
(clause 11). And it recommended that the governor, if so advised
by his ministers, would be justified in asking the council to review
an alteration in the provision for a transferred subject.
In the Government of India no measure of responsibility was
introduced. The executive council consisted of six ordinary members
and the commander-in-chief. Of the ordinary members three must
have had ten years' service under the crown in India and one must
be a barrister of five years' standing. The joint report suggested the
abolition of these statutory limitations, to secure elasticity, and also
the early appointment of a second Indian as member, which was
possible without legislation. The joint committee removed the limit
on the total numbers, retained the official qualifications for at least
three members, and widened the legal qualification by making it
include lawyers who were pleaders of a High Court in India. It
also thought that not less than three members of council should be
Indians.
In addition to their proposals for admitting Indians more freely to
* Cd. 123, p. 163. 2 Questions 5689-95.
COUNCIL OF STATE 599
the executive government, the authors of the joint report desired to
provide greater opportunities for discussion in a popular assembly.
They attached considerable importance to this as paving the way for
social legislation which might impinge on religious matters, and in
the past had always been undertaken with reluctance by the alien
government. With this object they suggested an enlargement of the
legislative council (now called the legislative assembly) and the addi-
tion of a new chamber called the Council of State. As two-thirds of
the former body was to be elected, it was necessary in the Government
of India also to provide for the case where vital government measures
or supply had been denied. It was proposed to do this through the
council of state, which was to include only twenty-one elected members
out of fifty, with officials up to twenty-five and four non-official
nominated members. Government bills were ordinarily to be intro-
duced and passed in the assembly and then go to the council of state.
Amendments made by the latter which were not accepted by the
assembly were to be discussed by a joint session of both houses. If
the assembly refused leave to the introduction of a bill, or rejected
one, the governor-general in council might certify that the bill was
essential to the interests of peace, order or good government. It would
then be introduced in the council of state, and, when passed there,
become law without further reference to the assembly. Lastly to save
time in an emergency a certified bill might be passed into law in the
council of state alone, and merely reported to the assembly.
While provincial councils were to pass budgets, subject to the
power of the governor to restore grants for reserved subjects, the
imperial legislature was to be empowered only to pass resolutions
which were not binding, though they would have enhanced significance
from the wider representation in the assembly compared with the
former legislative council.
These devices appeared to the joint committee as objectionable
as the similar methods proposed in the provinces. It increased
popular representation in the council of state and proposed that it
should be a real second chamber (clause 18), while reserving powers
of certification, for both finance and legislation, to the governor-
general in council where necessary for the discharge of his responsi-
bility (clauses 25 and 26).
The legislative councils as framed by the act contained more than
twice as many members as those of the old councils, the number
ranging from iii to 125 in the four larger provinces and from fifty-
three to ninety-eight in four others. These numbers might be enlarged
by rules, subject to the provision that not more than 20 per cent,
should be official members and at least 70 per cent, should be elected.
The council of state contained sixty members of whom not more than
a third might be officials, while the legislative assembly had 140, of
whom 100 were elected and twenty-six officials, and, if the number
6oo THE REFORMS OF 19 19
was increased, the same proportions should be maintained. With
these increases in numbers and responsibihties, it was decided that
the governor-general or head of a province should no longer preside
over his legislature. The governor-general appointed a president of
the council of state from among its members. Presidents of the
legislative assembly and the provincial councils were first appointed
by the governor-general or governor for a term of four years, but
were afterwards to be elected by the members. The recommendation
of the joint committee that the first president of the legislative assembly
should be a person *' qualified by experience of the House of Commons
and a knowledge of parliamentary procedure, precedents and con-
ventions " (clause 20) was accepted, and a similar appointment was
made in the legislative council of Bengal.
Most of the proposals of the franchise committee were accepted by
the joint committee. It demurred, however, to the suggestion that
non-official members of both the council of state and legislative
assembly should be elected by the same group of persons and it
preferred direct election to the latter instead of indirect (clauses 18
and 19). Separate (communal) representation was condemned in the
joint report as contrary to the principles of responsible government,
without precedent except in a few minor states, and bad because it
encouraged members of a state to think of themselves primarily as
citizens of any smaller unit than itself, and tended to stereotype
existing relations (paras. 227-9). Reluctantly the authors acquiesced
in the principle so far as Muslims were concerned, because of the
arrangements made in 1909 (which they regretted), the agreement
between political leaders in the Lucknow Congress of 191 6, and
because they knew that Muslims were anxious about their position
under a system of popular government (para. 231). Though history
affords few precedents for such a system, it has many to show that
minorities not so protected have remained for long periods with no
representation. Besides the Muslims other communities urged their
claims. In Madras it was shown that Brahmans, who numbered only
3 per cent, of the population, had almost monopolised representation
and occupied three times as many of the higher posts in the services
as other Hindus and more than all other communities together. The
select committee recommended that seats should be reserved for the
non-Brahman Hindus in Madras and for the Marathas in the Bombay
Presidency who had also failed to secure representation.^ They also
suggested that rural areas and the depressed classes should receive a
larger share than was allotted by Lord Southborough's committee.
Female suffrage, which they rightly pointed out went deep into the
social system and susceptibilities of India, was left to be decided by
the legislative councils when they were constituted. ^ Disqualifications
^ The rules drawn up in the Panjab also reserved seats for Sikhs in that province.
2 Female suffrage was gradually voted by the councils.
POSITION OF SECRETARY OF STATE 60 1
(as has been shown in chapter xxxi) had been a source of much
discussion, and their application to individuals had caused much
soreness, while exemption had been an invidious task. It was now
proposed that dismissal from government service should no longer be
a bar, but that a criminal conviction entailing a sentence of more than
six months' imprisonment should disqualify for five years from the
date of the expiration of the sentence. As suggested by the franchise
committee, a residential qualification for a candidate in his con-
stituency was imposed only in the provinces of Bombay, the Panjab
and the Central Provinces.
These organic changes in the governments in India involved
altering their relations with the secretary of state in council. It was
pointed out in the joint report (para. 291) that delegation to re-
sponsible ministers implied that parliament must set certain bounds
to its own responsibility for the internal administration of the country,
so far as transferred subjects were concerned, and might reasonably
sanction delegation in regard to reserved subjects. A committee,
presided over by Lord Crewe, examined these questions. Indian
politicians had often criticised the secretary of state's council on the
ground that the retired officials were usually opposed to reforms.
Lord Crewe's committee suggested that this body should become
purely advisory, and that one-third of its members should be chosen
by the secretary of state from persons domiciled in India, whose
names had been placed on a panel by the votes of non-official members
of the Indian legislative council. The secretary of state, no longer
bound as in the past by the votes of the council in questions of finance,
would refer to it what matters he pleased. While hitherto his previous
sanction had been required in all important new departures and in
certain specified cases, a principle of previous consultation should be
substituted. Joint approval by the Government of India and a
majority of the non-official members of the legislative assembly should
ordinarily carry with it, in either legislative or administrative action,
the assent of the secretary of state unless he felt that
his responsibility to parliament for the peace, good order and good government
of India, or paramount considerations of imperial policy, required him to secure
reconsideration of the matter at issue by the legislative Assembly.
The select committee (clause 31) held that no statutory change
should be made so long as the governor-general remained responsible
to parliament, but it was in favour of a growing convention that
the secretary of state might "reasonably consider that only in ex-
ceptional circumstances should he be called upon to intervene in
matters of purely Indian interest where the government and the
legislature of India are in agreement". Protective tariffs had long
been asked for in India, and, in the dislocation of finance caused by
the late war, changes of a protective character had been made in the
6o2 THE REFORMS OF 191 9
customs-duties. The committee recommended this case specially as
one for relaxation of control, to remove the suspicion, sometimes
justified in the past, that India's fiscal policy was subjected to the
interests of British trade. The only remedy was to grant liberty to
devise tariff arrangements which seemed best fitted to the needs of
the inhabitants of India, both consumers and manufacturers, as an
integral part of the British Empire. Control over transferred subjects
was to be restricted to the narrowest possible limits, and the con-
vention of deference to combined agreement between the government
and legislature was ordinarily to be extended to reserved matters in
the provinces.
So far as the Council of India was concerned the committee did not
favour abolition (clause 3). Advice would still be needed, and a
formal council was preferable to an informal one. It was, however,
suggested that the Indian element should be increased and the term
of office shortened to ensure a constant flow of fresh experience from
India and to relieve Indian members from long exile. In accordance
with these recommendations the number of members now varies
between eight and twelve, half of whom must have served or resided
in India for at least ten years, and have not left India more than five
years before the date of their appointment. Their tenure of office is
five years, though reappointment for a similar term is possible, the
special reasons of public advantage which justify this being recorded
and laid before parliament. A member who at the time of his appoint-
ment is domiciled in India receives a special allowance of ^(^600 a year
in addition to the ordinary salary of 5^1 200. Slight changes were made
in the powers of the secretary of state to arrange the conduct of
business in his council, but the drastic alterations proposed in 19 14
(see chapter xi) to enable the secretary of state to withdraw many
classes of questions from his council were not pursued.
Lord Crewe's committee had, however, recommended that those
functions performed by the secretary of state in council which were
akin to the duties of high commissioners of the self-governing do-
minions, should be arranged for separately, and a high commissioner
was appointed for India in October, 1920. The debit to India of the
salary of the secretary of state had long been a grievance, and the act
laid down that it should now be paid out of moneys provided by
parliament, while the salaries of his under-secretaries and any other
expenses of his department might also be met in the same way.
It was clearly impossible for parliament to legislate in full detail
for all the numerous matters which required legislation. The act
therefore provided that many of these should be governed by rules.
Although these were to be made by the secretary of state, or by the
governor-general in council with the former's sanction, they were
to be brought to the formal notice of parliament. The most important
class of rules, by which the powers of superintendence, direction and
control over the Government of India, vested in the secretary of state
IMPORTANCE OF THE REFORMS 603
(with or without his council), might be regulated or restricted, re-
quired the previous sanction of both houses of parliament, if they
affected subjects which had not been transferred to popular control
in the provinces. Rules for the classification of subjects as central or
provincial, for fixing the size of legislative bodies and governing the
qualifications of members, franchise and elections, or for the conduct
of business in these bodies, must be laid on the table in both houses,
and if an adverse address is passed by either house His Majesty in
council may annul them. Other rules that must be laid for informa-
tion include those for admission to the Indian Civil Service, and for
appointment to that service of persons domiciled in India, or for
laying down the qualifications of persons domiciled in British India
and born of parents habitually resident there who may be appointed
to fill posts ordinarily reserved for the Indian Civil Service.
None of the constitutional changes made in other parts of the
British Empire had, in Lord Selborne's opinion, been more important
than these reforms in India. ^ The size of the country, its vast popula-
tion with complexities due to divisions of caste and religion, the rule
by foreigners who made no attempt at assimilation, and the absence
of indigenous representative institutions, were factors which combined
to suggest caution and the need of full control over the experiment.
It was therefore provided that at the expiration of ten years a com-
mission should be appointed to enquire into the working of the
system of government, the growth of education, and the development
of representative institutions in British India, and to report whether
and to what extent it was desirable to establish the principle of re-
sponsible government, or to extend, modify or restrict whatever
degree then existed. An attempt to ensure more concentrated atten-
tion on Indian topics coming before parliament was made by ap-
pointing Indian standing committees. The royal proclamation issued
on the passing of the act contained a recognition of the magnitude
of the experiment, fortified by reliance on the good will and honest
purpose of all who would have to deal with it.
The path will not be easy and in the march towards the goal there will be need
of perseverance and of mutual forbearance between all sections and races of my
people in India. I am confident that these high qualities will be forthcoming.
I rely on the new popular assemblies to interpret wisely the wishes of those whom
they represent and not to forget the interests of the masses who cannot yet be
admitted to franchise. I rely on the leaders of people, the ministers of the future,
to face responsibility and endure misrepresentations, to sacrifice much for the
common interest of the state, remembering that true patriotism transcends party
and communal boundaries, and, while retaining the confidence of the legislatures,
to co-operate with my officers for the common good in sinking unessential differences
and in maintaining the essential standards of a just and generous government.
Equally do I rely upon my officers to respect their new colleagues and to work
with them in harmony and kindliness ; to assist the people and their representatives
in an orderly advance towards free institutions; and to find in these new tasks
a fresh opportunity to fulfil, as in the past, their highest purpose of service to my
people.
^ Questions 4077-83, Gd. 97 (1919).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I
IMPERIAL LEGISLATION AND THE SUPERIOR
GOVERNMENTS, 1818-1857
ORIGINAL SOURCES
Unpublished Documents
The chief source of information lies in the records of the various governments at
the India Office and in the record offices of India. Details regarding these may be
found in the various hand-books cited in the bibliographies of the previous volume.
The Additional Manuscripts at the British Museum include the papers of Lord
Liverpool, of Lord Auckland, of Lord Broughton, and of Lord Ripon (President
of the Board of Control, 1843-6). Some parts of the last collection will not be open
to the public till 1933. The papers of Lord EUenborough are in the Public Record
Office.
Published Documents
The Parliamentary Papers of the period contain a great variety of documents.
The most important are those connected with the renewal of the Company's
privileges in 1833 and 1853. These are: Session 1830, vols, v, vi; 1830-1, vol.
ix; 1831, vols. V, vi; 1831-2, vols, viii-xiv; 1833, vol. xxv; 1852-3, vols,
xxvii-xxxiii. Hansard gives the debates on these measures.
Baird, J. C. Private letters of the Marquess of Dalhousie. 1910.
Colchester, Lord. Indian administration of Lord EUenborough. 1874.
Elliot's Standing Orders. Madras, 1904.
Hastings, Lord. Private Diary. 2 vols. 1858.
Law, Sir Algernon. India under Lord EUenborough. 1926.
MuKHERji, P. Indian constitutional documents. 2 vols. Calcutta, 191 8.
Victoria, Queen. Letters. 3 vols. 1907.
Contemporary Writings
Argyll, Duke of. India under Dalhousie and Canning. 1865.
Arnold, Edwin. The Marquis of Dalhousie's administration. 2 vols. 1862.
Brief enquiry into the state and prospects of India by an eye-witness in the military
service of the Company. 1833.
Campbell, G. India as it may be. 1853.
East India question fairly stated. 1831.
Graham, Archibald. The means of ameliorating India. 1835.
Hough, W. India as it ought to be under the new charter act. 1853.
India Reform Tracts. (Include: The Government of India since 1834; the Native
states of India; the Government of India under a bureaucracy.)
Malcolm, Sir John. The government of India. 1833.
Martin, R. M. British India: its history, topography, government, etc. n.d.
Napier, Sir Charles. Defects civil and military of the Indian government. 1853.
Opinions of Lords Wellesley and Grenville on the government of India. 1832.
Prinsep, H. T. The India question in 1853. ^^SS-
Rickards, R. India, or facts submitted to illustrate the character and condition
of the native inhabitants. 1833.
RoYLE, Dr R. The productive resources of India. 1840.
Shore, F.J. Notes on Indian affairs. 2 vols. 1837.
6o6 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sketch of the commercial resources, and monetary and mercantile system of
British India. 1837.
Thornton, Edward. India: its state and prospects. 1835.
Chapters of the modern history of India. 1840.
Trevelyan, C. E. Papers transmitted from India. 1830.
SECONDARY WORKS
General
Auber, p. Rise and progress of British power in India. 2 vols. 1837.
Bengal Past and Present. Calcutta, 1907, etc.
Beveridge, H. Comprehensive history of India. 3 vols. 1867.
Burgess, Dr James. The chronology of modern India. 191 3.
Curzon, Marquis of. British government in India. 2 vols. 1925.
Ilbert, Sir Courtney. The government of India. 1922.
Imperial Gazetteer of India. Vol. i. Descriptive, Oxford, 1907; vol. 11, Historical,
1908; vol. m, Economic, 1908; vol. iv. Administrative, 1907; Atlas, 1909.
Lyall, Sir Alfred. Rise and expansion of the British dominion in India. 1910.
Marshman, J. C. History of India from the earliest period to the close of Lord
Dalhousie's administration. 3 vols. 1867.
Mill, James. History of British India. 5th ed. with notes and continuation by
H. PI. Wilson. 10 vols. 1858.
MuiR, Ramsay. The making of British India. Manchester, 19 15.
Roberts, P. E. India. 2 vols. Oxford, 1916-20.
Strachey, Sir John. India. 1888.
Thornton, Edward. History of the British empire in India. 6 vols. 1841.
Trotter, L.J. History under Queen Victoria from 1836 to 1880. 2 vols. 1886.
Special
Boulger, D. Lord William Bentinck. Oxford, 1892.
Broughton, Lord. Recollections of a long life. 6 vols. 1 909-11.
CoLviN, Sir Auckland. Life of John Russell Colvin. Oxford, 1895.
DuRAND, H. M. Life of Sir H. M. Durand. 2 vols. 1883.
Foster, Sir William. The East India House. 1924.
John Company. 1926.
Hardinge, Viscount. Viscount Hardinge. Oxford, 189 1.
Hunter, Sir W. W. The Marquess Dalhousie. Oxford, 1890.
Kaye, Sir John W. Memorials of Indian government. 1853.
Life and correspondence of Henry St George Tucker. 1854.
Life and correspondence of Sir John Malcolm. 2 vols. 1856.
Lives of Indian officers. 2 vols. 1889.
I ee-Warner, Sir William. Life of the Marquis of Dalhousie. 2 vols. 1904.
ISAPiER, Sir William. Life of Sir Charles Napier. 4 vols. 1857.
Ritchie, Mrs A. T. Earl Amherst. Oxford, 1894.
Trevelyan, Sir G. O. Life and letters of Lord Macaulay. ist ed. 1876; popular
ed. 1889.
chapters n and xiii
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BENGAL, 1818-1918
Unpublished Documents
Apart from the administrative records of the separate districts, these consist
especially of the revenue, judicial and public proceedings of the Bengal govern-
ment, and the proceedings of the Board of Revenue, which for a long period acted
as the effective government of the province. For the papers preserved at the India
Office, the reader should consult Sir William Foster's Guide to the India Office Records.
For the records in India, see the Handbook to the records oftlie Government of India and
BIBLIOGRAPHY 607
the Catalogue of the English records of the Government of Bengal. The Bengal government
has also published a series of indexes to the dispatches exchanged with the home
government. These comprise:
Select index to the general letters from the court of directors in the Judicial
Department, 1 785-1854. 1924.
Select index to general letters to and from the court of directors in the Revenue,
etc. Departments, 1 771-1858. 1926.
Select index to general letters to and from the court of directors in the Separate
Revenue, etc. Departments, 1 765-1854. 1926.
Select index to general letters to the court of directors, 1793- 1858, and from the
court of directors, 1827-9, in the Judicial Department. 1927.
Select index to general letters to and from the court of directors in the Public,
etc. Departments, 1834-56. 1927.
Published Documents
The Parliamentary Papers include the following :
Report on the excise system in Bengal, 1856, vol. xxvi.
Report of the Indigo Commission, 1865, vols, xliv, xlv.
Reports of the Bengal Sanitary Commission, i866, vol. liii, and 1867, vol. lii.
Report of the Indian Police Commission, 1905, vol. lvii.
Report of the Indian Excise Committee, 1907, vol. lviii.
Report of the Decentralisation Commission, 1909, vols, xliv-xlvi.
For the parliamentary enquiries of 1833 and 1853, see p. 605, supra.
Bengal Administration Reports (annual), 1858-9 to 191 8-1 9 (especiaNy the volume
for 191 1-12, which contains a valuable historical review).
Chakrabatti, Rai Manohan. Summary of changes in the jurisdiction of districts
in Bengal, 1757-19 16. Calcutta, 19 18.
Martin, Montgomery. The history, antiquities, topography and statistics of
Eastern India. 3 vols. 1838. (Based on the reports of Francis Buchanan.
But large sections of these were omitted by Martin. To some extent this has
been made good by the textual publication of Buchanan's reports relating to
the districts of Bhagalpur (Patna, 1930), Patna and Gaya (Patna, 1925),
Shahabad (Patna, 1926) and Purnea (Patna, 1928). Reference should also
be made to the series of district gazetteers for the province.)
Report of the Bengal District Administration Committee. Calcutta, 19 15.
Other Works
Baden-Powell, B. H. Land systems of British India. 3 vols. Oxford, 1892.
The land revenue and its administration in British India. Oxford, 1907.
Badr-ud-din Ahmad. "Old judicial records of the Calcutta High Court." {Proc.
of the Indian Hist. Com. v, 70.)
Buckland, C. E. Bengal under the lieutenant-governors from 1854 to 1898.
Calcutta, 1 90 1.
Butler, Major John. Travels and adventures in the province of Assam during a
residence of fourteen years. 1855.
Campbell, George. Modern India. 1853.
Memoirs of my Indian career. 2 vols. 1893.
Carstairs, R. The little world of an Indian district officer. 191 2.
Field, C. D. The Regulations of the Bengal Code. Calcutta, 1875.
Eraser, Sir Andrew. Among Indian rajas and ryots. 191 1.
Gait, E. A. History of Assam. Calcutta, 1906.
Hunter, W. W. Orissa. 2 vols. 1872.
Inquiry into the causes of the stationary condition of India and its inhabitants with
an examination of the leading principles of two of the most approved revenue
systems. 1830.
Jack, J. C. Economic life of a Bengal district. 19 16.
Kaye, Sir John. The administration of the East India Company. 1853.
6o8 BIBLIOGRAPHY
O'Malley, L. S. S. History of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa under British rule.
Calcutta, 1925.
Permanent settlement emperilled, or the act of 1859. ^865.
Phillips, Arthur. Land tenures of Lower Bengal. 1876.
Ram Mohun Roy. Exposition of the practical operation of the judicial and
revenue systems of India. 1832.
Shakespeare, Col. L. W. History of Upper Assam. 19 14.
Tayler, William. Thirty-eight years in India. 2 vols. 1881.
[Watson, Col. Archibald.] Memoir of the late David Scott. Calcutta, 1832.
Zamindari settlement of Bengal. 2 vols. Calcutta, 1879.
chapters III and xv
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN MADRAS, 1818-1918
Unpublished Documents
The chief documents are the revenue and judicial proceedings of the Madras
government, preserved in the Madras Record Office and in the India Office, and
the proceedings of the Madras Board of Revenue. Many of these have been
printed but not published. These include early settlement reports of great value,
and the annual reports of the Board of Revenue. The Madras records have been
fully catalogued. For the papers at the India Office, see Sir William Foster's
Guide.
Published Documents
The Parliamentary Papers include the following :
Condition of the presidency, 1830, vol. xxviii, and i860, vol. lii.
Report on the excise system, 1856, vol. xxvi.
Mohaturpha, 1857 (session 2), vol. xxix.
Torture, 1854-5, vol. xl.
Report of the Police Commission, 1905, vol. lvii.
Report of the Indian Excise Committee, 1907, vol. lviii.
Report of the Decentralisation Commission, 1909, vols, xliv-xlvi.
For the parliamentary enquiries of 1833 and 1853, see p. 605, supra.
Local legislation consisted of the Madras Regulations, 1802-34, and the Madras
Acts, 1 862-1 9 1 9.
Annual Administration Reports, 1858-9 to 19 18-19.
Standing Orders of the Board of Revenue (various editions).
Annual Reports of the Board of Revenue.
The series called Selections from the Madras Records include the following among
others :
Disturbances in Parla Kimedy, 1832-6.
Papers relating to public instruction.
Revision of the land revenue in South Arcot.
Decrees regarding the mutual rights of land-holders and tenants in Malabar.
General revenue surveys.
Commutation rates.
Precis of papers relating to Jeypur.
Papers respecting judicial systems. Madras, loi 6.
The district manuals, revised and republished as the district gazetteers, contain
a great mass of information drawn from the district and other records of
government. ■
Other Works
Arbuthnot, Sir A. J. Minutes of Sir Thomas Munro. Madras, 1886.
Baden-Powell, B. H. The Indian village community. 1896.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 609
Baden-Powell, B. H. Land systems of British India. 3 vols. Oxford, 1892.
Bayley, W. H. and Huddleston, W. Papers on mirasi rights. 1862.
Bradshaw, John. Sir Thomas Munro. Oxford, 1906.
BuTTERWORTH, A. The Southlands of Siva. 1923.
Campbell, Major-Gen. John. Narrative of his operations in the hill tracts of
Orissa for the suppression of human sacrifices and female infanticide. 1 86 1 .
Thirteen years' service amongst the wild tribes of Khondistan. 1864.
"Civilian." The civilian's South India. 1921.
Dykes, W. J. B. Salem. 1853.
Hope, Lady. General Sir Aithur Cotton, his life and work. 1900.
Kaye, Sir John. The administration of the East India Company. 1853.
Macleane, G. p. Manual of the administration of the Madras Presidency. 1885.
Morris, Henry. The Godavari district. 1878.
Norton, J. B. Letter to Robert Lowe, Esq., on the conditions and requirements
of the presidency of Madras. 1854.
Observations on the land tenures of Southern India, by a Madras civilian. 1866.
Satthianadhan, S. History of education in the Madras Presidency. 1894.
Slater, G. Some South Indian villages. Madras, 19 18.
Smollett, J. B. Madras, its civil administration, being rough notes from personal
observation. 1858.
Srinivasa Raghava Iyengar, S. Memorandum on the progress of the Madras
Presidency. 1893.
Thornton, E. India, its state and prospects. 1835.
chapters IV and xiv
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN BOMBAY, 1818-1918
Unpublished Documents
The chief source consists of the papers in the Revenue Department of the Bombay
Government proceedings for which see Foster's Guide.
Published Documents
Parliamentary Papers. Apart from the proceedings of the select committees of
1833 and 1853 (see p. 605, supra), the chief item consists of papers relating to the
Inam Commission, 1857 (session 2), vol. xxix. See also the reports of the
Excise Committee, Indian Police Commission and Decentralisation Com-
mission (p. 608, supra).
Annual Administration Reports of the Bombay Presidency, 1858-9 to 1918-19.
Selections from the Bombay Records include among other items :
Memoirs and Treatises regarding Mahi-kanta.
Sind Revenue Rough Surveys.
Papers on Sarinjams.
Report on the Sawuntwari State.
Narrative of the Bombay Inam Commission.
Character of the Land Tenures in the Bombay Presidency.
Memoirs, etc. on the state of Kutch.
Memoir of the state of the South Maratha Country.
Report on the village communities of the Deccan.
Forest, G. W. Selections from the official writings of Mouhtstuart Elphinstone.
1884.
District Gazetteers. These contain much information drawn from the official
records.
c H I VI 39
6io BIBLIOGRAPHY
Other Works
Altekar, a. S. History of village communities in Western India. 1928.
B.\DEN-PowELL, B. H. Land systcms of British India. 3 vols. Oxford, 1892.
The Indian village community. 1896.
Dixon, C. J. Sketch of Mairwara: The origins and habits of the Mairs. 1850.
Douglas, James. Glimpses of Bombay and Western India. 1900.
Drewitt, F. D. Bombay in the days of George IV; Memoirs of Sir Edward West.
1907.
Edw^ardes, S. M. The Bombay City Police. 1923.
Grime in India. 1924.
GoLDSMiD, Sir J. Life of James Outram. 2 vols. 1881.
Hunter, Sir W. W. Bombay, 1 885-1 890, a study in Indian administration. 1892.
Jacob, Brig.-Gen. John. Views and opinions. Ed. Pelly. 1858.
Kaye, Sir J. Administration of the East India Gompany. 1853.
Keatinge, G. Rural economy in the Bombay Deccan. 191 2.
Mackay, Alexander. Western India, reports addressed to the Chamber of
Gommerce of Manchester, etc. 1853.
Mackintosh, A. An account of the origin and present condition of the tribe of
Ramoosies. 1833.
Martineau, J. Life of Sir H. Bartle Frere. 2 vols. 1895.
Outram, Sir James. Memoir of the Public Services rendered by Lt.-Gol. Outram,
C.B. 1853.
Rogers, A. Land revenue of Bombay. 2 vols. 1892.
Shand, A. I. General J. Jacob. 1900.
Sykes, W. H. The land tenures of the Deccan. 2 vols. 1835.
Special report of the statistics of the four coUectorates of the Deccan under
the British Government. 1 838.
chapters V and xvi
DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED PROVINCES,
CENTRAL PROVINCES AND THE PANJAB, 1818-1918
Unpublished Documents
The official records of the Government of India and of the various provincial
governments form an immense mass of material. Copies transmitted to the home
government are described in Sir William Foster's Guide down to 1858. Printed
press lists are available for the records of the provincial governments.
Published Documents
Parliamentary Papers. Besides the proceedings of the select committees of 1833
and 1853 (see p. 605, supra) much material is to be found, including the
following items :
Campaigns against the refractory zamindars in the Conquered and Ceded
Provinces, 1806, vol. xv.
The fifth report from the select committee of the House of Commons, 181 2,
vol. VII.
Minute by Dalhousie, 28 February, 1856, on his administration, 1856, vol. xlv.
Papers relating to Oudh and its annexation, 1856, vol. xlv.
Reports of the royal commission appointed to examine the proposals of the
Indian Law Commission, 1856, vol. xlv.
Memorandum of John Stuart Mill on the Indian administration, 1857-8,
vol. XLIII.
Report of Col. Baird Smith on famine in the North-Western Provinces and the
Panjab, 1862, vol. xl.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 6ii
Papers relating to the sale of waste land and to the redemption of the land
revenue, 1862, vol. xl.
Papers relating to the administration of Oudh, 1865, vol. xl.
Papers relating to irrigation work in India, 1866, vol. lii; 1867, vol. l.
Papers relating to the Panjab Tenancy Act, 1870, vol. mi.
Papers relating to Forest Conservancy, 1871, vol. lii.
Papers regarding the land revenue system, 1902, vol. lxxi.
Report of the Indian Police Commission, 1905, vol. lvii.
Report of the Indian Excise Committee, 1907, vol. lviii.
Report of the Indian Decentralisation Commission, 1909, vols, xliv-xlvi.
Moral and material progress reports (annual volumes from 1858-9; see especially
the years 1864-5, i868-g, 1872-3, 1882-3, 1901-2).
Selections from the revenue records of the North-Western Provinces. Allahabad ,
1818-20, 1822-33.
Report on the territories of the Rajah of Nagpur by R. Jenkins. Calcutta, 1827.
Reports on the administration of the Panjab for the years 1849-50, 1 850-1,
185 1-2, 1852-3. Lahore.
Reports on the administration of the North-Western Provinces, Central Provinces
and the Panjab (historical portions) for 1882-3 ^^^ ^^^ 1911-12.
Reports of the Indian Famine Commissions. Calcutta, 1880, 1898 and 1901.
Papers regarding the excise administration in India. Gazette of Indian March, 1890.
Report of the Indian Irrigation Commission. Calcutta, 1903.
Triennial review of irrigation in India, 19 18-21. Calcutta, 1922.
Land revenue settlement reports. (The earlier reports contain a mass of informa-
tion regarding the early history of district administration.)
District Gazetteers (published locally).
Provincial Gazetteers.
Other Works
Baden-Powell, B. H. The land systems of British India. 3 vols. Oxford, 1892.
The Indian village community. 1896.
Land revenue of British India. Oxford, 191 3.
Beglar, J. D. Report of a tour in Bundelkhand and Malwa, 187 1-2, and in the
Central Provinces, 1873-4. Calcutta, 1878.
Campbell, G. Modern India. 1853.
Memoirs of my Indian career. 2 vols. 1893.
Crooke, W. The North-Western Provinces of India. 1897.
Darling, M. L. The Punjab peasant. 1925.
Rusticus loquitur. 1928.
Douie, Sir J. The Punjab Settlement Manual. Lahore, 19 15.
DuRAND, H. M. Life of Sir Alfred Lyall. 191 3.
Elmslie, G. R. Thirty-five years in the Panjab. 1908.
Field, C. D. The Regulations of the Bengal Code. 1876.
Forsyth, James. The Highlands of Central India.
Grant, Charles. Gazetteer of the Central Provinces. Nagpur, 1870.
Kaye, Sir John. Administration of the East India Company. 1853.
Keene, H. G. a servant of John Company. 1897.
Latifi, A. The industrial Panjab. 191 1.
Lyall, A. C. Gazetteer for...Berar. Bombay, 1870.
Moreland, W. H. Revenue administration of the United Provinces. Allahabad,
1911.
O'Dwyer, Sir Michael. India as I knew it, 1 885-1 925. 1925.
Raikes, Charles. Notes of the North-Western Provinces of India. 1852.
Shore, F.J. Notes on Indian affairs. 2 vols. 1837.
Sleeman, Sir W. H. Rambles and recollections of an Indian official. 2 vols. 1893.
Smith, R. Bosworth. Life of Lord Lawrence. 2 vols. 1883.
Taylor, Meadows. Story of my life. 1920.
Temple, Sir R. James Thomason. 1895.
Thorburn, S. S. The Punjab in peace and war. 1904.
Trevaskis, H. K. The Panjab of to-day. Vol. i. Lahore, 193 1.
39-2
6i2 ' BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTERS VI and xrx
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS
Unpublished Documents
The proceedings of the various Indian governments occur first in the pubHc and
general, and later in the educational, departments. For these the reader should
consult Sir William Foster's Guide up to 1858. The early records of the various
missionary societies which carried on educational work in India also throw much
additional light upon early educational activities.
Published Documents
Parliamentary Papers. Besides the proceedings of the select committees of 1833
and 1853, the following volumes contain the principal references to this
subject: 1812-13, vol. x; 1845, vol. xxxiv; 1846, vol. xxxi; 1847-8, vols.
XLViii, LXi; 1852, vols. X, xxxvi; 1857-8, vol. xliii; 1859, vol. xix (session 2),
vols, xxiii, xxiv; i860, vol. lii; 1864, vol. xlii; 1867, vol. l; 1867-8, vol. l;
1870, vol. lii; 1872, vol. XLiv; 1877, vol. lxiii; 1884, vol. lix; 1888, vol.
LXX\TI.
Parliamentary Debates. See especially the debates of 181 3 and 1833 in Hansard.
Sh.\rp, H. and Richey, J. A. Selections from the educational records of the
Government of India. 2 vols. Calcutta, 1920-2.
Adam's reports on education in Bengal and Bihar, 1835, 1836 and 1838. Calcutta,
1868.
Circular orders passed by the nizamat adawlat for the Lower and Western Pro-
vinces from 1796 to 1844. Calcutta, 1846.
A collection of despatches from the Home Department on the subject of education
in India, 1854-68. Calcutta, 1870.
Croft, Sir Alfred. A review of education in India from 188 1-2 to 1885-6.
Calcutta, 1886.
Quinquennial reviews of the progress of education in India: 1887-8 to 1 901-2, by
R. Nathan; 1902-7, by H. W. Orange; 1907-12, by H. Sharp; 191 2-1 7, by
H. Sharp.
Papers relating to education (selections from the Madras records, no. 2). Madras,
1855-
Report of the Indian Educational Commission of 1882.
Report of the Indian Universities Commission, 1903.
Report of the Calcutta University Commission, 1919.
Minutes of evidence on the Government of India Bill, 191 9, vol. 11.
Interim report of the Indian Statutory Commission (education), 1929.
Other Works
Bevan, E. Thoughts on Indian discontents. 1929.
BiLGRAMi, Sayyid Amir Ali. Education in India. 1902.
Carey, S. Pearge. William Carey. 1923.
Carpenter, Mary. The last days of Ram Mohun Roy. 1875.
Chailley,J. Administrative problems of British India. Tr. Meyer. 19 10.
Chirol, Sir V. India. 1926.
CoLEBROOKE, Sir T. E. Life of H. T. Colebrooke. 1873.
Life of Mountstuart Elphinstone. 2 vols. 1884.
Connexion of the East India Company's government with the superstitious and
idolatrous customs and rites of the natives of India, by a late resident in India.
1838.
CouPLAND, R. Wilberforce. Oxford, 1923.
Duff, Alexander. "State of indigenous education in Bengal and Bihar."
{Calcutta Review, 1844, 11, 301 sqq.)
■ India and Indian Missions. 1845.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 613
DuTT, RoMESH Grander. The Literature of Bengal. 1895.
Edwardes, Sir H. B. Prospect of the triumph of Christianity in India. 1866.
Fraser, Lovat. India under Curzon and after. 1 9 1 1 .
Gleig, G. R. Life of Sir Thomas Munro. 3 vols. 1831.
Memoirs of... Warren Hastings. 3 vols. 1841.
Heber, R. Narrative of a journey through the upper provinces of India. 3 vols.
1828.
Howell, A. Education in British India prior to 1854 ^^^ i^ 1 870-1. Calcutta.
1872.
James, H. R. Education and statesmanship in India, 1 797-1910. 191 1.
Jones, Sir William. Works, with a life of the author by Lord Teignmouth. 1807.
Ka YE, Sir John. Life and correspondence of Lord Metcalfe. 2 vols. 1854.
Kaye, Sir John, and Malleson, Col. G. History of the Indian Mutiny. Vol. i.
1897.
Lee-Warner, Sir W. Life of the Marquis of Dalhousie. 2 vols. 1904.
Leitner, Dr W. History of indigenous education in the Punjab. Calcutta, 1883.
LovETT, R. History of the London Missionary Society, 1 795-1895. 2 vols. 1899.
Macdonald, J. Ramsay. The government of India. 1920.
Mahmud, Sayyid. History of English education in India, 1 781-1893. Aligarh,
1895-
Marshman, J. C. Carey, Marshman and Ward. 1864.
Mayhew, Arthur. The education of India. 1926.
Christiam'ty and the government of India. 1929.
MiNTO, Lady. Lord Minto in India, 1807-14. 1880.
Morris, Henry. Life of Charles Grant. 1 904.
Muller, Max. Chips from a German workshop. Vol. 11. 1898.
Nesfield, J. C. "The results of primary education in the North-west and Oudh."
(Calcutta Review, 1883, lxxvi, 348 sqg.; lxxvii, 72 sgq.)
Nicholls, G. History of the Sanscrit College of Benares. 1907.
Paton, W. Life of Alexander Duff. 1923.
Richter, Julius. History of missions in India. Tr. S. H. Moore. 1908.
Ronaldshay, Lord. The heart of Aryavarta. 1925.
Life of Lord Curzon. Vol. n. 1928.
Satthianadhan, S. History of education in the Madras Presidency. 1894.
Sherring, M. a. History of Protestant missions in India. 1875.
Shore, Sir John. Considerations on the practicability of communicating the
knowledge of Christianity. 1808.
Smith, Dr George. Life of Alexander Duff. 1879.
Twelve Indian statesmen. 1897.
Stock, E. History of the Church Missionary Society. 1899.
Strachey, Sir John. India, its administration. 191 1.
Surendranath Banerjee, Sir. A nation in making. 1925.
Thomas, F. W. The history and prospects of British education in India. 1891.
Trevelyan, C. E. On the education of the people of India. 1838.
Trevelyan, Sir G. O. Life and letters of Lord Macaulay. 1876.
Walker, F. D. William Carey. 1926.
Whitehead, Dr H. Indian problems. 1924.
chapter VII
SOCIAL POLICY
Unpublished Documents
The main source of information lies in the papers of the East India Company
and its governments preserved at the India Office and in the Indian record offices
of Delhi, Madras and Bombay. The subject was dealt with mainly in the judicial
departments of the Indian governments. The reader should consult Sir William
Foster's Guide and the hand-books to the records of the Indian governments.
6 14 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Published Documents
Parliamentary Papers:
Missionaries, 1812-13, vol. viii.
Vellore mutiny, 181 2-1 3, vol. vin.
Infanticide, 1824, vol. xxm; 1828, vol. xxiii; 1830, vol. xxvin; 1837, vol. xlhi;
1839, vol. XXXIX ; 1840, vol. XXXVII ; 1841, vol. xvii; 1844, vol. xxxvi; 1845,
vol. xxxrv; 1843, vol. xxxv; 1847-8, vol. xlviii; 1849, vol. xl; 1850, vol. xli;
1852-3, vol. LXix; 1859, vol. XIX ; i860, vol. lii.
Slavery, 1831-2, Report of the select committee, vol. ix, App. I a; 1834, vol. xliv.
Sati, 1 82 1, vol. xviii; 1823, vol. xvii; 1824, vol. xxiii; 1825, vol. xxrv; 183 1-2,
vol. IX, App. G.
Connection with idolatry, 1839, vol. xxxix; 1841, vol. xvii; i860, vol. 01.
Parliamentary Debates, The subject was discussed at some length in the debates
on the renewal of the Company's charter in 18 13 and 1833. See Hansard,
1813, vol. XXV, and 1833, vols, xvni, xix.
Other Works
Ananda CooMARASWAMY. The dance of Siva. 1924.
"Baptist missions." {Quarterly Review, 1809, i, 193 sqq.)
Carey, S. P. William Carey. 1923.
Carpenter, Lant. A review of the labours of Rajah Ram Mohun Roy. 1833.
Duff, A. India and Indian missions. Edinburgh, 1839.
Farquhar, J. N. Modern Religious Movements in India. New York, 191 8.
"Female Infanticide." {Calcutta Review, 1844, i, 372 sqq.)
Forbes, James. Oriental memoirs. 2 vols. 1834.
Hyde, H. B. Parochial Annals of Bengal. 1901.
Jones, Sir W. and Colebrooke, H. T. Digest of Hindu law. 1801.
Ka ye, Sir John. Administration of the East India Company. 1853.
Memorials of Indian government. 1853.
Christianity in India. 1859.
Lovett, R. History of the London Missionary Society, 1 795-1 895. 2 vols. 1899.
Lyall, Sir A. Asiatic studies. 1884.
Marshman, J. C. Carey, Marshman and Ward. 1864.
Mayhew, a. Christianity and the government of India. 1929.
MoDY, C. Rustomjee. Female infanticide. 1849.
Moore, W. R. Hindu infanticide, i860.
Noel, B. W. England and India, an essay on the duty of Englishmen towards the
Hindoos. 1859.
O'Malley, L. S. S. History of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa under British rule. 1925.
Pearson, H. Memoirs of the Rev. C. Buchanan. 2 vols. 1817.
Peggs, J. India's cries to British humanity. 1830.
Penny, F. The Church in Madras. 3 vols. 1904-22.
Raikes, C. Notes on the North-Western Provinces. 1852.
Richter, Julius. History of missions in India. Tr. S. H. Moore. 1908.
Roy, Ram Mohun. English works. Ed. J. C. Ghose. 2 vols. Calcutta, 1887.
Sherring, M. A. History of Protestant missions in India. 1875.
Sleeman, Sir W. H. Ramaseeana or a vocabulary of the peculiar language used
by the Thugs. 1836.
Report on the system of megpunnaism or the murder of indigent parents for
their young children who are sold as slaves. Serampore, 1839.
Report on the depredations committed by the Thug gangs of Upper and
Central India. Calcutta, 1840.
Report on Budhuk alias Bagree decoits and other gang robbers by hereditary
profession. Calcutta, 1849.
Somerville, a. Crime and religious beliefs in India. Calcutta, 1931.
Stock, E. History of the Church Missionary Society. 1899.
"Suttee." {Calcutta Review, 1867, xcn, 221 sqq.)
Taylor, Meadows. Confessions of a Thug (various editions).
BIBLIOGRAPHY 615
Thompson, E. Suttee. 1928.
Thornton, Edward. Illustrations of the history and practices of the Thugs. 1837.
Tod, Lt. -Col. J. Annals and antiquities of Rajasthan. 1829.
Twining, Thomas. Travels in India a hundred years ago. 1893.
Walker, F. D. William Carey. 1926.
Wilson, J. History of the suppression of infanticide in Western India. 1855.
chapter viii
THE COMPANY'S MARINE
Unpublished Documents
The three presidency governments and the Government of India each main-
tained a series of consultations dealing with questions of the marine; for these
Sir William Foster's Guide should be consulted.
Published Documents
The Parliamentary Papers contain comparatively little on this subject. The chief
references are: Session 1812-13, vol. viii; 1832, ix; 1847, xli; 1852, xi;
1852-3, XII ; 1863, XXXVIII ; 1873, xii.
Contemporary Writings
Description of the port and island of Bombay. 1 724.
Downing, Clement. History of the Indian wars. 1737. Reprint ed. by Sir
William Foster, 1924.
Forbes, J. Oriental memoirs. 4 vols. 1813.
Fryer, J. New account of East India and Persia. 1698. Reprint ed. by Crooke,
Haicluyt Society, 1908.
Grose, J. H. Voyage to the East Indies. 1 757.
Hall, Capt. B. Fragments of voyages and travels. 1831-3.
Hamilton, A. New account of the East Indies. 1727. Reprint ed. by Sir William
Foster. 1930.
Hamilton, W. Description of Hindustan. 1820.
Ives, E. Voyage from England to India in 1754. 1773.
NiEBUHR, C. Voyage en Arabic. 1774.
OviNGTON, F. Voyage to Surat in 1689. 1696. Reprint ed. by Rawlinson. 1929.
Parsons, A. Travels in Asia, etc. 1775.
Pechel, S. Historical account of Bombay. 1781.
Valentia, Viscount. Voyages and travels to India, etc. 3 vols. 1809.
Walker, A. Considerations on the affairs of India. 181 1.
Other Works
AiTKEN, B. Old and new Bombay. 19 12.
Anderson, P. The English in Western India. 1854.
BiDDULPH, J. The pirates of Malabar. 1907.
Bombay Quarterly Review.
Bridge, Sir C. "India and the Navy." {Tlie Spectator, 9 April, 1910.)
Bruce, John. Annals of the Honourable East India Company, 1 600-1 707. 3 vols.
1810.
Campbell, J. M. Bombay Gazetteer, vol. xxvi, parts i-iii. Town and Island
materials.
Douglas, J. Bombay and Western India. 2 vols. 1893.
Duff, J. G. Grant. History of the Mahrattas. 1826. Reprint ed. by S. M.
Edwardes. 3 vols. 1921.
Edwardes, S. M. Gazetteer of Bombay city and island. 3 vols. 1909.
Imperial Gazetteer of India. Provincial Series: Bombay. 2 vols. 1909.
6i6 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Karaka, D. F. History of the Parsis. 1884.
Low, G. R. History of the Indian Navy. 2 vols. 1877.
Maclean, J. Guide to Bombay. 1 875-1 900.
MoOKERji, R. History of Indian shipping. 1912.
Phipps, J. Papers relating to ship-building in India. 1840.
Strachey, R. and O. Keigwin's rebellion. Oxford, 191 6.
Wheeler, J. T. Early records of British India. 1878.
CHAPTERS IX and XXII
THE ARMIES OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
AND THE INDIAN ARMY
Unpublished Documents
The principal source consists of the records in the military departments of the
Government of India and of the provincial governments, described in Sir William
Foster's Guide down to 1858. The Madras Record Office also contains a consider-
able number of papers, being all that survive of the records of the old Madras
Army. The Orme MSS. and the Home Miscellaneous Series at the India Office
also contain a large number of references to the subject of these chapters, and the
reader should refer to Hill's Catalogue of the Orme MSS. and the same author's
Catalogue of the Home Miscellaneous Series, both fully indexed.
Published Documents
In the Parliamentary Papers, the chief collection is vol. li of session i860, relating
to the White Mutiny, and vol. xlii of session 1861, relating to the transference
of the Gompany's aiTnies to the crown. Besides these much information is
scattered through the pages of the official gazettes, the published Army
Orders, and the Army Lists.
The following form a brief selection from other official and semi-official publica-
tions:
Orders respecting the troops on the Goast of Goromandel. 1 766.
Abstract of the articles of war. 1782.
Regulations for the Honourable Gompany's troops on the Goast of Goromandel.
1787.
Abstract of general orders and regulations of the East India Gompany's army.
1812.
The East India Military Galendar, containing the services of general and field
officers. 3 vols. 1823.
Articles of war for the native troops. 1848.
A survey of the functions and constitutional importance of the Indian Army will
be found in the Report of the Indian Statutory Gommission (1930).
Pamphlets and Gontemporary Gontroversy
Account of the origin, progress and consequences of the late discontent of the
army.... 1810.
Badenach, Gapt. W. Inquiry into the state of the Indian army. 1826.
Barlow, Sir G. H. A brief sketch of the services of Sir G. H. Barlow founded on
a series of authentic papers and correspondence. 1 8 1 1 .
Bell, Lt.-Gol. John. Proceedings of a general court martial at Bangalore on the
trial of Lt.-Gol. John Bell. 1835.
Bentinck, Lord William. Memorial... containing an account of the mutiny at
Vellore. 18 10.
Frere, Sir H. Bartle. Letter to Gol. Durand on the reorganisation of the Indian
army. 1858.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 617
Jacob, Gen. John. Remarks on the native troops of the Indian army. 1854.
Letter from an officer at Madras to a friend formerly in that service exliibiting the
rise, progress, and actual state of the late unfortunate insurrection in the
Indian army. 1810.
Letter from an officer in India. 1794.
Letter from the Marquis of Gornwallis on the best mode of new-modelling the
army of India. 1794.
[MacMullen, John.] Camp and barrack-room. 1846.
Malcolm, Sir John. The disturbances in the Madras army. 1809.
Rise, progress, and character of the native army of India. 181 6.
Marsh, Charles. Review of some important passages in the late administration
of Sir G. H. Barlow. 181 3.
Exposure of the misrepresentations and calunmies in Mr Marsh's review.... 181 3.
Original papers elucidatory of the claims preferred by the officers of the Honour-
able Company's army. 1794.
Petrie, William. Statement of facts delivered to Lord Minto. 1810.
View of the policy of Sir George Barlow as exhibited in the acts of the Madras
government in the late unhappy occurrences... by Indus. 1810.
Other Works
Army in India and its evolution. The. Calcutta, 1924.
Atkinson, Capt. G. F. Curry and rice, on forty plates. 5th ed. 191 1.
Bayly, Col. Richard. Diary. 1896.
Begbie, p. J. History of the services of the Madras artillery, n.d.
Broome, Capt. Arthur. Historyof the rise and progress of the Bengal army. 1850.
Buckle, E. Memoir of the services of the Bengal artillery. 1852.
Bullock, Capt. H. Indian infantry colours. Bombay, 1932.
Burton, Major R. G. History of the Hyderabad contingent. 1905.
Campbell of Barcaldine, Major Sir Duncan. Records of Clan Campbell in the
military service of the Honourable East India Company, 1 600-1 858. 1925.
Cardew, Sir Alexander. The White Mutiny. 1929.
Carey, W. H. The good old days of Honourable John Company. 2 vols. Calcutta,
1906.
Catalogue of Books relating to the military history of India. Simla, 1901.
Charles, William. Soldiering in India, n.d.
Dewar, Douglas. Bygone days in India. 1922.
DoDWELL, H. Sepoy recruitment in the old Madras army. Calcutta, 1922.
The Nabobs of Madras. 1926.
EwART, Joseph. Digest of the vital statistics of the European and native armies in
India. 1859.
Hadley, Capt. George. A compendious grammar of the current corrupt dialect
of the jargon of Hindostan, commonly called Moors. 2 vols. n.d.
Hill, S. G. "The old sepoy officer." (English Historical Review, April and July,
1913-)
HoDSON, Major V. C. P. Historical records of the governor-general's bodyguard.
1910.
List of the officers of the Bengal army, 1 758-1 834. (Vols, i and n covering
A-K, 1927, 1928.)
Imperial Gazetteer of India. Vol. rv. 1907.
Innes, Lt.-Col. P. R. Histoiy of the Bengal European regiment. 1885.
Jackson, R. P. Historical records of the 13th Madras native infantry. 1898.
Kaye, Sir John. Lives of Indian officers. 2 vols. 1889.
Neill, Colonel. Regimental records of the ist Madras Europeans. 1842.
Stubbs, Major-Gen. F. W. List of officers who have served in the Bengal artillery.
Bath, 1892.
Thackeray, Col. Sir Edward. Biographical notices of officers of the Royal
(Bengal) Engineers. 1900.
*' Three years' gleanings (a brief history of the Bombay army)." {East India United
Service Journal, 1838.)
6i8 BIBLIOGRAPHY
ViBART, Major H. M. Military history of the Madras engineers. 2 vols. 1881.
Addiscombe : its heroes and men of note. 1 894.
Williams, Capt. Historical account of the rise and progress of the Bengal native
infantry. 181 7.
Williamson, Capt. Thomas. The East India Vade Mecum, or complete guide to
gentlemen intended for the civil, military or naval services of the Honourable
East India Company. 18 10.
Wilson, Col. W. J. History of the Madras army. 5 vols. 1882.
CHAPTER X
THE MUTINY
Unpublished Documents
The chief authorities for the history of this subject consist of the papers in the
Secret and Military Departments of the Government of India and of the provincial
governments. These are not yet accessible to the student save by special permission.
Published Documents
Parliamentary Papers: 1857 (session 2), vols, xxix, xxx; 1857-8, vols, xlii, xliii,
XLiv; 1859, vol. xviii.
Panjab Government Records: Mutiny Correspondence, 2 vols. Lahore, 191 1;
The Mutiny Reports, 2 vols. Lahore, 191 1.
Collection of official narratives of the Mutiny furnished by the magistrates or
commissioners of the various localities. 1858.
Press-List of Mutiny Papers, 1857. Calcutta, 1921.
Calcutta Gazette.
Forrest, Sir G. W. Selections from the letters, despatches, and other state papers
in the Military Department of the Government of India, 1857-8. 4 vols.
Calcutta, 1 893-1 9 1 2.
MuiR, Sir William. Records of the Intelligence Department, North-Western
Provinces. 2 vols. 1902.
Reminiscences and Contemporary Pamphlets
Annals of the Indian rebellion.
Atkinson, Capt. G. F. The campaign in India, 1857-8. With illustrations. 1859.
Basis of the reorganisation of our power in India, by an old resident. 1858.
Bourchier, Col. G. Eight months campaign against the Bengal sepoy army. 1858.
Campbell, R. J. R. India: its government, misgovernment and future considered.
1858.
Cave-Brow^, J. The Panjab and Delhi in 1857. 1861.
Conduct after the disaffection and mutiny of the native regiments, and its con-
sequences, n.d.
Cooper, F. The crisis in the Punjab. Lahore and London, 1858.
Crisis in India: causes and proposed remedies by a military officer. 1857.
Crisis in the Punjab from May until the fall of Delhi, by a Punjab employe.
Lahore, 1858.
Duff, Dr A. The Indian rebellion: its causes and results. 1858.
Dunlop, R. H. W. Service and adventures with the Khakee Ressalah. 1858.
Edwards, W. Personal adventures during the Indian rebellion in Rohilcund,
Futehghur, and Oude. 1858.
Fraser, Edward. "The Pearl's Brigade in the Indian Mutiny." {Mdrirur*s
Mirror, xii, 23 sqq.)
Fraser, Capt. H. Our faithful ally the Nizam, showing... his services during the
Mutinies. 1865.
Goldsmid, Sir F.J. James Outram. 2 vols. 1881.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 619
Gordon-Alexander, Lt.-Col. W. Recollections of a Highland subaltern under
Colin Campbell. 1898.
Grant, Gen. Sir Hope. Incidents in the Sepoy war. 1873.
Greathed, H. H. Letters written during the siege of Delhi. 1858.
Greene, Capt. D. S. Views in India, taken from drawings.... 1859.
GuBBiNS, M. R. Account of the mutinies in Oude. 1858.
History of the siege of Delhi, by an officer who served there. 1861.
HoDSON, G. H. Hodson of Hodson's Horse... being extracts from the letters of the
late Major W. S. R. Hodson. 1889.
Jacob, Sir G. Le G. Western India before and during the Mutinies. 1871.
Jacob, Brig.-Gen. John. Tracts on the native army of India. 1857.
Keene, H. G. '57 : some account of the administration of Indian districts during
the revolt of the Bengal army. 1883.
Letters from Lucknow and Cawnpore. Greenwich (privately printed), 1858.
[Malleson, Col. G. B.] The Mutiny of the Bengal army by one who served under
Sir Charles Napier. 1858.
Metcalfe, C. T. Two native narratives of the Mutiny in Delhi. 1898.
Norton, J. B. The rebellion in India and how to prevent another. 1857.
OuTRAM, Sir James. Campaign in India, 1857-8. Privately printed, i860.
Raikes, Charles. Notes on the revolt in the North-Western Provinces. 1858.
Roberts, Frederick, Lord. Letters written during the Indian Mutiny. 1924.
Russell, W. H. My diary in India, 1858-9. 2 vols. i860.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan. The causes of the Indian revolt. Benares, 1873.
Somerville, E. (E. Wheel-tracks. 1923.
Tayler, William. Thirty-eight years in India. 2 vols. 1881.
Thornhill, Mark. The personal adventures and experiences of a magistrate. 1884.
Turnbull, Major J. R. Sketches of Delhi. 1858.
Verney, Edmund Hope. The Shannon's Brigade in India. 1862.
Young, Col. Keith. The siege, assault, and capture of Delhi, as given in his diary
and correspondence. 1902.
Other Works
General histories
[Ball, Charles.] History of the Indian Mutiny. 2 vols. n.d.
Forrest, Sir G. W. History of the Indian Mutiny. 3 vols. 1904-12.
Holmes, T. R. History of the Indian Mutiny. 5th ed. 1904.
Innes, Lt.-Gen. McLeod. The Sepoy revolt. 1897.
Kaye, J. W. and Malleson, G. B. History of the Sepoy war in India. 6 vols.
1864-80.
MacMunn, Sir George. The Indian Mutiny in perspective. 1931.
Malleson, Col. G. B. The Indian Mutiny of 1857. 1891.
Wood, Sir Evelyn. The revolt in Hindustan. 1908.
Special works
Atkins, J. B. Life of Sir W. B. Russell. 2 vols. 191 1.
Bonham, J. Oudh in 1857. 1928.
CoLViN, Sir Auckland. Life of John Russell Colvin. 1895.
Gimlette, Lt.-Col. G. H. D. Postscript to the records of the Indian Mutiny. 1927.
Grant, Sir Hope. Life with selections from his correspondence. 2 vols. 1894.
Innes, Lt.-Gen. McLeod. Lucknow and Oudh in the Mutiny. 1895.
JocELYN, Col. J. R. J. The Royal and Indian artillery in the Mutiny. 1915.
Marshman, J. C. Memoirs of Sir Henry Havelock. i860.
Shadwell, Gen. Lawrence. Life of Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde. 2 vols. 1881.
SiEVEKiNG, I. G. A turning point in the Indian Mutiny. 1910.
Thompson, E. The other side of the medal. 1925.
Trevelyan, Sir G. O. Cawnpore. 1865.
Trotter, L. J. Life of John Nicholson. 1904.
Vibart, Col. H. M. Richard Baird Smith. 1897.
620 BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTERS XI and xn
THE HOME AND INDIAN GOVERNMENTS, 1858-1918
Published Documents
Parliamentary Papers:
Mill's memorandum, 1857-8, vol. xliii.
Transfer to the crown, 1857-8, vols. 11, xi.
Legislative councils, 1861, vol. xliii; 1890, vol. liv; 1894, vol. lviii.
Telegraphs and cable, i860, vol. lxii; 1864, vols, xliii, lxvi; 1865, vol. xl;
1866, vol. Lii; 1867-8, vol. L.
Legislation and the secretary of state, 1876, vol. lvi.
Curzon-Kitchener controversy, 1905, vol. lvii; 1906, vol. lxxxi.
General administration, 1889, vol. lviii; 1909, vol. lxxii.
Report of the Mesopotamia Commission, 191 7, G. 8610.
Gazette of India Extraordinary, 23 June, 1905 (Curzon-Kitchener controversy).
Hansard's Parliamentary Debates: especially 1853, vols, cxxvii, cxxviii, cxxix;
1858, vols. cxLviii, cxLix, GL, CLi; 1 86 1, vols. CLXii, CLxni, CLXiv; 1869, vols,
cxcrv, cxcv, cxGvi; 1882, vol. cclxxiii.
(New Series) Lords, 1912, vol. xi; 1913, vol. xiv; 1914, vol. xvi; 1917, vol. xxv;
Commons, 1914, vols, lx, lxvi; 191 7, vol. xcv; 191 9, vols, cxvi, cxxil
Ilbert, Sir Courtney. The Government of India. Oxford, 1898.
Other Works
Arthur, Sir George. Life of Lord Kitchener. 3 vols. 1920.
Bughan, John. Life of Lord Minto. 1924.
Cecil, Lady G. Life of Lord Salisbury. Vols, i, 11. 192 1.
Chailley, J. Administrative problems of British India. Tr. Meyer. 1910.
Chesney, Col. George. Indian polity. 1870.
Churchill, W. S. Life of Lord Randolph Churchill. 2 vols. 1906.
Clarke, Godfrey. The Post-Office of India, n. d.
Creagh, Sir O'Moore. Indian Studies. 1920.
CuRZON, Lord. Lord Curzon in India, being a selection from his speeches. Ed.
Raleigh. 1906.
British government in India. 2 vols. 1925.
Denison, Sir William. Varieties of vice-regal life. 2 vols. 1870.
DoDWELL, H. A sketch of the history of India from 1858 to 19 18. 1925.
DuRAND, Sir M. Life of Sir Alfred Lyall. 1913.
Elgin, James, 8th Earl. Letters and journals. Ed. T. Walrond. 1872.
Fitzmaurige, Lord E. Life of Lord Granville. 2 vols. 1905.
Forrest, G. W. The administration of Lord Lansdowne. 1894.
Fowler, E. H. Life of Lord Wolverhampton. 191 2.
Eraser, Lovat. India under Curzon and after. 1 9 1 1 .
GoLDSMiD, Sir F. Telegraph and travel. 1874.
Hamilton, Lord George. Parliamentary reminiscences, 1 886-1 906. 1922.
Holland, B. Life of the Duke of Devonshire. 191 1.
Hunter, Sir W. W. Life of Lord Mayo. 2 vols. 1876.
Jacob, Sir George Le G. The English government of India, i860.
Lang, Andrew. Life and letters of Sir Stafford Northcote. 2 vols. 1890.
Lawrence, Sir W. R. The India we served. 1928.
Lyall, Sir Alfred. Life of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava. 1905.
Macdonald, J. Ramsay. The government of India. 1920.
Maine, Sir H. S. Indian speeches and minutes. 1892.
Mallet, B. Lord Northbrook, a memoir. 1908.
Martineau, J. Life of Sir Bartle Frere. 2 vols. 1895.
Monypenny, W. F. and Buckle, G. E. Life of Disraeli. 6 vols.
MoRLEY, John. Indian speeches. 1909.
Recollections. 2 vols. 19 17.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 621
Newton, Lord. Life of Lord Lansdowne. 1929.
RoNALDSHAY, Lord. Life of Lord Curzon. Vol. 11. 1928.
Seton, Sir Malcolm. The India Office. 1926.
Smith, R. B. Life of Lord Lawrence. 2 vols. 1883.
Stephen, Leslie. Life of Sir James Stephen. 1895.
Strachey, Sir John. India, its administrations. 191 1.
Sydenham, Lord. My working life. 1927.
West, A. Sir Charles Wood's administration of Indian aftairs from 1859 to 1866.
1867.
Wolf, L. Life of Lord Ripon. 2 vols. 1921.
chapter XVII
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE POLICY
Printed Documents
Parliamentary Papers:
Report of the Indian Famine Commission, 1880, vol. lii.
Report of Indian Famine Commission, 1898, 1899, vols, xxxii, xxxiii.
Report of Indian Famine Commission, 1901, 1902, vol. lxx.
Resolution of the Government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh on the
Famine of 1907-8, 1909, vol. lii.
Statement exhibiting the Moral and Material progress and condition of India
during the year 191 7-18. H.M. Stationery Office, 191 9.
Speeches by the Honourable Sir John Hewett, G.C.S.I., Lieutenant-Governor of
the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. Allahabad, 191 2.
The Land Revenue Policy of the Indian Government. Calcutta, 1902.
Report of the Indian Industrial Commission. Calcutta, 191 8.
Other Works
Balfour, Lady Betty. The history of Lord Lytton's Indian administration. 1899.
Personal and literary letters of Lord Lytton. 2 vols. 1906.
Campbell, Sir G. Memoirs of my Indian career. 2 vols. 1893.
Chari, S. V. "Famine relief in Madras a hundred and fifty years ago." {Indian
Hist. Records Com. vi, 78 sqq.)
Curzon in India, Lord. Ed. Sir T. Raleigh. 1906.
DuTT, Romesh Ghander. Famines and land-assessments in India. 1900.
Eraser, Lovat. India under Curzon and after. 191 1.
Fuller, Sir Bampfylde. Studies of Indian life and sentiment. 19 10.
HiCKEY, W. Memoirs. Vol. in. 1923.
Horne, W. O. Work and sport in the old I.C.S. 1928.
Knowles, Mrs H. C. A. Economic development of the overseas empire. 1924.
LovEDAY, A. The history and economics of Indian famines. 19 14.
Maconochie, Sir Evan. Life in the Indian Civil Service. 1926.
MoRELAND, W. H. India at the death of Akbar. 1920.
From Akbar to Aurangzeb. 1923.
Ronaldshay, Lord. Life of Lord Curzon. Vol. 11. 1928.
CHAPTER XVIII
INDIAN FINANCES, 1858-1918
Printed Documents
Annual publications of the Government of India: Financial statement and budget;
Finance and revenue accounts ; Reports of the controller of currency.
Reports of the Indian Currency Committees, 1893 ^.nd 1899.
Report of the Royal Commission on Indian Finance and Currency, 19 14.
Robertson, T. Report on the administration and working of Indian railways.
Pari. Papers, 1903. vol. xlvii.
The Imperial Gazetteer of India. Vols, m, iv.
622 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Other Works
Barbour, Sir D. The standard of value. 191 2.
The influence of the gold supply on prices and profits. 1914.
Brunyate, J. R. Account of the presidency banks. 1900.
Chand, Gyan. The financial system of India. 1926.
Chesney, Sir George. Indian polity. 1868.
Cooke, C. N. Banking in India. 1863.
Jain, L. C. Indigenous banking in India. 1929.
Keynes, J. M. Indian currency and finance. 191 3.
Shirras, G. Find lay. Indian finance and banking. 191 9.
The science of public finance. 1924.
SiNHA, H. Early European banking in India. 1927.
Strachey, Sir John. India, its administration. 191 1.
Strachey, Sir John and Lt-.Gen. Richard. Finances and public works of India,
1869-81. 1882.
Trevelyan, C. E. Report on the inland customs and town-duties of the Bengal
Presidency. Calcutta, 1834.
Wattel, p. K. System of financial administration in British India. 1923.
CHAPTER XX
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERVICES, 1858-1918
Printed Documents
Hansard's Parliamentary Debates: 1853, vols, cxxvii, cxxvm; 1861, vol. CLxm;
1869, vol. cxciv; Commons, 1912 (July), vol. xli; 1922 (June), vol. clv.
Parliamentary Papers: 1894, vol. lx; pp. i-i 10 relating to the question of holding
simultaneous examinations in England and in India.
Reports of the Indian Public Ser\dces Commissions appointed in 1886 and 191 2.
Report of the Indian Police Commission appointed in 1902.
Report of the Committee appointed by the Goverrmient of India to examine the
question of the Reorganization of the Indian Medical Services. Simla, 19 19.
Other Works
Crawtord, D. G. History of the Indian Medical Service, 1600-1913. 2 vols. 1914.
Curzon in India, Lord. Ed. Sir T. Raleigh. 1906.
Danvers, F. C. and others. Memorials of old Haileybury College. 1894.
Eraser, LovAT. India under Curzon and after. 191 1.
O'Malley, L. S. S. The Indian Civil Service, 1601-1930. 1931.
RoNALDSHAY, Lord. Life of Lord Curzon. Vol. 11. 1928.
Surendranath Banerjee, Sir. A nation in making. 1925.
Trevelyan, G. O. The competition wallah. 1866.
chapter xxi
LAW REFORM
Printed Documents
Unrepealed acts of the governor-general in council. Calcutta, 1909-20.
Note. The Civil Procedure Code of 1859, the Penal Code of i860, and the
Criminal Procedure Code of 186 1, are published in the acts of the Government
of India for those years.
Parliamentary Papers: Reports of the India Law Conmiission: 1837-8, vol. xli;
1842, vol. xxx; 1843, vol. xxxvi; 1844, vol. xxxvii; 1845, vol. xxxiv; 1847,
vol. XLi; 1852-3, vol. XXVII ; 1856, vol. xlv.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 623
BuHLERjJ. G. LawsofManu. Oxford, 1886.
Sacred laws of the Aryans. 2 vols. Oxford, 1897.
Halhed, N. B. a code of Gentoo laws. 1781.
Hamilton, C. The Hidaya. Calcutta, 179 1.
Jolly, J. E. Minor law-books. 2 vols. Oxford, 1882-9.
Richardson, D. The Damathat. Rangoon, 1874.
Setlur, . Hindu law-books on inheritance. Bombay, 191 1.
West, Sir R. and Buhler, J. G. Digest of Hindu law. Bombay, 191 9.
Other Works
Amir All Mahomedan law. 2 vols. Calcutta, 191 2-1 7.
CoLEBROOKE, T. E. Digest of Hindu law of contract and succession. Madras, 1874.
Cov^^LL, Herbert. Hindu law. 1895.
History and constitution of the legislative authorities of British India.
Calcutta, 1905.
FoRGHHAMMER, E. Essay on the sources and development of Burmese law. 1885.
Ghose, J. C. Hindu law. 1903.
Ilbert, Sir Courtney. Legislative methods and forms. Oxford, 1907.
Jolly, J. E. History of Hindu law. 1885.
Macnaghten, W. H. Principles and precedents of Moohummudan law. 1825.
Mayne, J. D. Hindu law and usage. Madras, 1922.
Moore, Lewis. Malabar law and custom. 1905.
Russell, A. D. and Suhrawardy, . Muslim law of inheritance. 1925.
Sripati Raya. Customs and customary law in British India. 1911.
Stokes, Whitley. The Anglo-Indian codes. Oxford, 1886 (supplements 1889 and
1891).
Strange, Sir Thomas. Hindu law. 2 vols. 1830.
Sundara AiYER. Malabar law. Madras, 1922.
Trevelyan, Sir E. J. Constitution and jurisdiction of the courts of civil procedure
in British India. Calcutta, 1923.
TuppER, Sir G. L. Punjab customary law. 1881, etc.
U Gaung. Digest of Burmese law. Rangoon, 1902.
Vesey-Fitzgerald, S. Muhammadan law. Oxford, 193 1.
Wilson, Sir R. K. Anglo-muhammadan law. Calcutta, 1921.
chapter XXIII
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
Unpublished Documents
The period of this subject is too recent for the documents at the India Office to
be available for general study. But the Foreign Office papers at the Public Record
Office (F.O. 65) which are open down to the year 1885 include a very valuable
series entitled Central Asia. This contains a large number of papers forwarded to
the Foreign Office by the India Office, and so to some extent makes up for the lack
of the Indian papers themselves.
Published Documents
Parliamentary Papers: 1873, vols, l, lxxv; 1874, vol. lxxvi; 1878, vol. lxxx;
1878-9, vols. LVi, Lxxvii; 1880, vols. Liii, Lxxviii; 1 88 1, vols, lxx, xcviii;
1882, vol. lxxx; 1884, vol. Lxxxvii; 1884-5, vol. lxxxvii; 1887, vol. lxiii;
1888, vol. lxxvii; 1895, vol. cix; 1905, vol, lvii; 1908, vol. cxxv; 1919, vol.
XXXVII ; 1904, vol. Lxvii; 1905, vol. lviii.
Gooch, G. p. and Temperley, H. British documents on the origins of the war.
Vol. IV, The Anglo-Russian Rapprochement, 1903-7. 1929.
Meyendorff, A. Correspondance diplomatique du Baron de Staal. 2 vols. 1929.
Plowden, T. C. Precis of the correspondence showing the policy and relations of
the British government towards Afghanistan, April, 1872, to May, 1879.
Calcutta, 1879.
624 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Other Works
Abd-ul-Ghani, Dr. Review of the political situation in Central Asia. 1922.
Abd-ur-rahman, Amir. Autobiography. 2 vols. 1900.
Andrew, W. P. India and her neighbours. 1878.
Argyll, Duke of. The Eastern question. 2 vols. 1879.
Ashe, Major W. Personal records of the Kandahar campaign. 1881.
Baddeley, J. F. Russia in the 'eighties. 1921.
Bartlett, E. a. Shall England keep India? 1886.
Baxter, W. E. England and Russia in Asia. 1885.
Bell, Sir G. Tibet past and present. 1924.
Bell, Major Evans. The Oxus and the Indus. 1869.
Bell, M. S. Account of the British wars with Persia from the occupation of
Kharakin 1838. 1889.
Bell, H. T. M. "Great Britain and the Persian Gulf." [Journal of United Empire,
1915-16.)
Bellew, H. W. Journal of a political mission to Afghanistan in 1857. 1862.
Kashmir and Kashgar. 1875.
Bennett, T. J. "Past and present connection of England with the Persian Gulf."
{Journal of the Society of Arts, June, 1902.)
BouLGER, D. G. England and Russia in Central Asia. 2 vols. 1879.
Central Asian questions. 1885.
Life of Sir Haliday Macartney. 1 908.
BuRNABY, Col. F. A ride to Khiva. 1877.
Cambridge History of British foreign policy, 1 783-1919. Ed. Ward and Gooch.
3 vols. 1922-3.
Candler, E. The unveiling of Lhasa. 1905.
Cecil, Lady G. Life of Lord Salisbury. Vols, i, 11. 1922.
Chirol, Sir V. The Middle Eastern question, or some political problems of
Indian defence. 1903.
Cholet, Armand Pierre de. Excursion en Turkestan. 1889.
Clarke, Sir G. S. (Lord Sydenham.) Russia's sea-power. 1898.
CoLOMB, Capt. P. H. Slave-catching in the India Ocean. 1873.
CoLQ,UHOUN, A. R. Russia against India. 1900.
Cunningham, Sir A. Ladak. 1854.
CuRZON, Lord. Russia in Central Asia in 1889. 1889.
Frontiers: the Romanes lecture. 1907.
Tales of travel. 1923.
Das, Sarat Chandra. Narrative of a journey to Lhassa, 188 1-2. Official edition,
1885; ed. by Rockhill, 1902.
David, Major. Is a Russian mvasion of India feasible? 1877.
Dennis, A. L. P. Foreign policies of Soviet Russia. 1924.
DoBSON, G. Russian railway advance into Central Asia. 1 890.
Duke, Joshua. Recollections of the Kabul campaign 1879 ^^^ 1880. 1883.
Earle, E. M. Turkey, the great powers, and the Baghdad railway. New York,
1923.
Eastwick, W. J. Lord Lytton and the Afghan War. 1879.
Edwards, H. S. Russian projects against India. 1885.
Elmslie, G. R. Life of Sir Donald Stewart. 1903.
Fitzmaurice, Lord E. Life of Lord Granville. 2 vols. 1905.
Forrest, G. W. Life of Sir Neville Chamberlain. 1909.
Life of Lord Roberts. 19 14.
Forsyth, Sir Douglas. Autobiography. 1887.
Goldsmid, Sir F. J. James Outram. 2 vols. 1881.
Graham, Stephen. Through Russian Central Asia. 19 16.
Gray, J. A. At the court of the amir. 1901.
Hamilton, Angus. Afghanistan. 1906.
Hanna, H. B. The second Afghan War. 3 vols. 1899.
Hellwald, F. von. The Russians in Central Asia. Tr. Wingman. 1874.
Hensman, Howard. The Afghan War. 1881.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 625
HoLDiCH, Sir Thomas. Tibet the mysterious. 1906.
The Indian borderland, 1880- 1900. 1909.
The gates of India. 19 10.
Ikbal Ali Shah, Sirdar. Afghanistan of the Afghans. 1928.
Khanikoff, N. de. Memoire sur la partie meridionale de I'Asie centrale. Paris,
1861.
KoRFF, Baron S. A. Russia's foreign relations during the last half-century. 1922.
KuROPATKiN, A. N. Les confins anglo-russes dans I'Asie centrale. 1872.
Turcomania and the Turcomans. 1880.
Landon, Percival. Lhasa. 2 vols. 1905.
Le Mesurier, Major A. Kandahar in 1879. 1880.
Long, J. Russia, Central Asia, and British India. 1865.
Lumsden, Major. Mission to Kandahar, i860.
Lyons, Capt. G. Afghanistan the buffer state. 1910.
Macgregor, Col. C. M. Narrative of a journey through the province of Khoras-
san and on the north-west frontier of Afghanistan in 1875. 1879.
Martens, M. F. La Russie et I'Angleterre dans I'Asie centrale. 1879.
Marvin, Charles. The Russians at the gates of Herat. 1885.
Millard, T. F. The conflict of policies in Asia. 1924.
MoNYPENNY, W. F. and Buckle, G. E. The life of Benjamin Disraeli. 6 vols.
1910-20.
Newton, Lord. Lord Lansdov/ne. 1929.
O'DoNOVAN, E. The Merv oasis. 2 vols. 1882.
Olufsen, O. The emir of Bokhara and his country. 191 1.
Palmieri, Aurelio. La politica asiatica dei Bolscevichi. Vol. i. Bologna, 1925.
PopowsKi, Josef. The rival powers in Central Asia. Tr. Black. 1893.
Rawlinson, George. Memoir of Sir Hemy Rawlinson. 1898.
Rawlinson, Sir Henry. England and Russia in the Far East. 1875.
Rees, J. D. Russia, India, and the Persian Gulf. 1903.
Roberts, Frederick, Lord. Forty-one years in India. 2 vols. 1897.
RoNALDSHAY, Lord. On the outskirts of empire in Asia. 1904.
Life of Lord Curzon. Vol. 11. 1928.
RouiRE, Dr. Rivalite anglo-russe au dix-neuvieme si^cle en Asie, Golfe persique,
fronti^res de I'lnde. 1908.
Second Afghan War: an abridged official account produced in the Intelligence
branch, Indian Army. 1908.
Shadbolt, S. H. The Afghan campaign of 1878-80. 2 vols. 1882.
SiMOND, C. Les Russes aux portes de I'lnde. 1885.
Skrine, F. H. The expansion of Russia. 3rd ed. 1915.
Stumm, H. Russia's advance eastwards, containing the despatches of the German
military commissioner. 1874.
Sykes, Sir Percy. Sir Mortimer Durand: a biography. 1926.
Tate, G. P. The kingdom of Afghanistan. Bombay, 191 1.
Terentyef, M. a. Russia and England in Central Asia. 2 vols. Calcutta, 1.876.
Thorburn, S. S. Asiatic neighbours. 1894.
Valikhanow, C. C. Russians in Central Asia. 1865.
Vambery, a. Central Asia. 1874.
The coming struggle for India. 1885.
Western culture in eastern lands. 1906.
Wheeler, S. The ameer Abdur Rahman. 1895.
Wilson, Sir Arnold. The Persian Gulf. 1928.
WiTTE, Count. Memoirs. 1921.
Woeikof, a. Le Turkestan russc. 19 14.
Wolf, LuciEN. Life of the first Marquess of Ripon. 2 vols. 1921.
Wood, Capt. John. Journey to the sources of the Oxus. 1872.
Wyllie, J. W. S. Essays on the external policy of India. 1875.
Yate, C. E. Northern Afghanistan. 1888.
Yavorski, J. L. The Russian mission to Kabul. 1885.
0 H I VI 40
626 BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
Unpublished Documents
Volumes of correspondence in the Offices of the Commissioners of Arakan,
Tenasserim, Pegu, 1852-62.
Rangoon Secretariat records, 1862-19 18. The later years are in print. Only one
copy of the printed index, 1827-91, exists in the Secretariat, and not all the entries
are traceable.
Government of India, Foreign Department Secret and Political files (mostly
printed), 1855-86, concerning Burmese Missions to Calcutta; Burmese Treaties
with European Continental Powers; Karenni; Ceremonial at the Burmese Court;
Diaries and Proceedings of the Ava Presidency ; Affairs of Upper Burma ; French
Consulate at Mandalay; Bombay Burma Trading Corporation.
Published Documents
Parliamentary Papers relating to the East Indies (House of Commons unless other-
wise stated) : 1852, 1490; 1852-3, 77 and 97 (Lords), C. 1608; 1856, 46, 403;
1861, 25; 1863, 327; 1864, 300, C. 3315; 1865, 373, 405, C. 3579; 1866, 350;
1867, 193, 233, 421 ; 1867-8, 28, 192, 367; 1868-9, 251, 420; 1871, 165, 341 ;
1873, 258, C. 864; 1874, C. 982, vol. i; 1876, C. 1422, C. 1456, C. 1605; 1877,
170, C. 1712, C. 1832; 1883, 48 and 185 (Lords), C. 3501, C. 3547; 1884,
C. 3833^ C. 4049; 1884-5, C. 4247; 1886, C. 4614, C. 4690, C. 4735, C. 4861,
C. 4887; 1887, C. 4962, C. 5140, C. 5164; 1888, 319, 320, 338, C. 5368; 1889,
346, C. 5625; 1892, 22; 1893-4, i49j 538; 1894, C. 7547; 1895, C. 7710; 1898,
C. 8654; 1901, C. 429; 1904, C. 1807; 1906, 348, 349, C. 2687.
CoLBECK, Rev. A. J. Letters from Mandalay, 1878-9. ..and.. .1885-8. Knares-
borough, 1892.
Annual Reports of the Government of Burma : General Administration, Civil and
Criminal Justice, Police, Excise, Revenue, Education, etc.
Government of India Decennial Census Reports.
District Gazetteers and Settlement Reports.
Other Works
Anderson, J. A report on the Expedition to Western Yunnan via Bhamo. Calcutta,
1871.
Bastian, A. Die Volker des ostlichen Asien. 4 vols. Leipzig, 1866.
Bigandet, p. a. An outline of the History of the Catholic Burmese Mission from
the year 1720 to 1887. Rangoon, 1887.
BiLLES, — . Questions Indo-Chinoises, Organisation de I'lnstruction Publique,
Creation d'un Corps d'Officiers Indigenes. Paris, undated (before 1906).
British Burma Gazetteer. 2 vols. Rangoon, 1880.
Chailley-Bert, J. La Colonisation de I'lndo-Chine, I'exp^rience anglaise. Paris,
1892.
Crosthwaite, Sir Charles. The Pacification of Burma. London, 191 2.
Doumer, Paul. L'Indo-Chine Fran^aise. Paris, 1905.
Fytche, a. Burma, Past and Present. 2 vols. London, 1878.
Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, by J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman.
5 vols. Rangoon, 1900.
Hall, D. G. E. The Dalhousie-Phayre Correspondence, 1852-6. Oxford, 1932.
Harvey, G. E. History of Burma to 1824. London, 1925.
Konbaungset Yazawin [standard vernacular chronicle]. Mandalay, 1905.
Marks, J. Forty years in Burma. London, 191 7.
NiSBET, J. Burma under British Rule and Before. 2 vols. London, 1901.
Scott, J. G. France and Tongking, a Narrative of the Campaign of 1884. London,
1885.
Burma as it was, as it is, and as it will be. London, 1886. See s.v. Gazetteer
of Upper Burma.
Stebbing, E. p. The Forests of India. 3 vols. London, 1922-6.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 627
CHAPTER XXV
THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER
Unpublished Documents
The India Office papers are still considered confidential, and are not available
for general use. The author has however been allowed to examine the valuable
series of Secret Border Reports (1903-19). The Foreign Office papers at the Public
Record Office (see p. 623, supra) contain a large number of papers transmitted
from the India Office, but these deal rather with Afghan and Russian than with
Frontier matters.
Published Documents
Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, especially the following:
Chitral Debate, 3 September, 1895.
A. J. Balfour's speech on the defences of India, 1 1 May, 1905.
Frontier Communications Debate (Lords), 31 May, 1921.
North-west Frontier Debate (Lords), 3 May, 1923.
Parliamentary Papers: 1854, vol. xlix; 1873, vol. l; 1877, vol. lxiv; 1878, vol.
xviii; 1881, vols. Liii, Lxx; 1888, vol. lxxvii; 1890-1, vol. lix; 1892, vol. lviii;
1895, vol. Lxxii; 1896, vols. LX, LXi; 1898, vol. lxiii; 1901, vol. xlix; 1902,
vol. LXXi; 1908, vol. LXXIV.
Government of India Reports :
Barrow, E. G. Tirah and Afridi Question. 1881.
BiscoE, — . Report on the Kandahar District. 1880.
Davies, R. H. Report showing the relations of the British government with the
tribes on the North-west Frontier of the Punjab. 1864.
Edwardes, H. B. Notes on the valley of Kuram and its people. 1857.
Hervey, Capt. Report on the district of Sibi. 1879.
Military Intelligence reports on Afghanistan. 1879-82.
Report of the North-west Frontier Committee (Bray Report). 1924.
Report of the Pamir Boundary Commission. 1897.
Report on the Tochi Pass into Dawar Valley. 1879.
Reports and correspondence (1868-9) relating to measures for maintaining
peace and security on the Sind, Punjab, and Baluch frontiers. 1869.
Scott, G. B. Report on the Tirah country. 1880.
Report on the country of the Mohmands. 1880.
Taylor, R. Memorandum on the Dera Ismail Khan District. 1852.
Temple, R. C. Report showing the relations of the British government with the
tribes on the North-west Frontier of the Punjab. 1856.
Baluchistan Agency Reports (pubhshed annually).
Baluchistan Code. 19 14.
North-west Frontier Province Administration Reports (1901 onwards).
Panjab Administration Reports. 1 850-1 900.
Panjab and North-west Frontier Code. 3 vols. 1928-9.
Panjab, Selections from the Public Correspondence of:
Lumsden, H. B. Report on the Yoozoofzaee District. 1853.
Report on the Eastern Khuttuks. 1857.
Memorandum on the Dera Ismail Khan District, i860.
Pollock, F. H. The Terre Khuttuks. 1857.
Panjab, Selections from the records of:
Bruce, R. Notes on the Dera Ghazi Khan District and tribes. 1871.
Cavagnari, p. L. N. Report on the Syads of Tira. 1875.
Minchin, C. Memorandum on the Beloch tribes in Dera Ghazi Khan. 1869.
Plowden, T. C. Papers relating to state affairs in Swat, etc. 1877.
Urmston, H. B. Notes on the Bunnoo District. 1869.
Warburton, R. Report on certain frontier tribes. 1877.
40-2
628 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Settlement Reports :
Barron, C. A. Kohat District. 1907.
Bolton, H. N. Dera Ismail Khan District. 1907.
Hastings, E. G. G. Peshawur. 1878.
James, H. R. Peshawur. 1865.
Thorburn, S. S. Bannu. 1879.
Tucker, H. Dera Ismail Khan. 1872-9.
Kohat. 1884.
Census Reports:
Bray, D. Census of Baluchistan. 1913.
HuGHES-BuLLER, — . Baluchistan. 1901.
Latimer, C. North-west Frontier Province. 191 2.
AiTCHisoN, C. U. Treaties, engagements, and sanads. Vol. ix. 1909.
Pelly, Lewis. Views and opinions of General John Jacob. 1858.
Records of the Scinde Irregular Horse. 2 vols. 1853-6.
Other Works
(N.B. For works relating to Afghanistan and Russia, cf. pp. 624-5, supra.)
Adye, J. M. Indian Frontier policy. 1897.
Sitana. Mountain campaign, 1863. 1867.
AiTGHisoN, C. U. Lord Lawrence. 1916.
Andrew, W. P. Our Scientific Frontier. 1880.
India and her neighbours. 1878.
Argyll, Duke of. The Eastern Question. Vol. 11. 1879.
Baden-Powell, B. H. Land systems of British India. Vol. 11. 1892.
Balfour, B. Lord Lytton's Indian Administration. 1899.
Barrow, E. G. The Peshawar border of the Punjab. 1884.
Bellew, H. W. Afghanistan and the Afghans. 1879.
An inquiry into the ethnography of Afghanistan. 1891.
General report on Yusafzais. 1864.
North-west Frontier and Afghanistan. 1879.
The races of Afghanistan. 1880.
Beynon, W. G. L. With Kelly to Chitral. 1896.
BiDDULPH, C. E. Our Western Frontier of India. 1879.
BiDDULPH, J. Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh. 1880.
Bird, W. D. Some principles of Frontier Mountain Warfare. 1909.
Black, C. E. D, Geographical notes on the work of the Afghan Boundary
Commission . 1 886 .
Bray, D. Ethnographical survey of Baluchistan. 2 vols. 19 13.
Life history of a Brahui. 1913.
Bruce, R. I. The Forward Policy and its results. 1900.
Buchan, J. Lord Minto. 1925.
Butler, W. Life of Sir George Pomeroy CoUey. 1899.
Callwtell, C. E. Tirah. 191 1.
Churchill, W. The story of the Malakand field force. 1916.
CoLLEN, E. The defence of India. 1906.
Colyar, de H. a. Candahar : our right to retain it. 1 88 1 .
Conway, W. M. Climbing and exploration in the Karakorum Himalayas. 1894.
Cotton, S. Nine years on the North-wcbt Frontier of India. 1868.
Curzon in India, Lord. Ed. Sir T. Raleigh. 1906.
Dacosta, J. A Scientific Frontier. 1891.
Dames, M. L. The Baloch race. 1904.
Da vies, C. C. The problem of the North-west Frontier. Cambridge, 1932.
D.B. Our Afghan Policy and the Occupation of Candahar. 1880.
Dictionary of Pathan tribes on the North-west Frontier. 1 9 1 o.
DiLKE, C. Problems of Greater Britain. 1890.
Drew, F. Jummo and Kashmir territories. 1875.
Durand, a. G. a. The making of a Frontier. 1899.
Edwardes, H. a year on the Punjab Frontier, 1848-9. 2 vols. 1851.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 629
Edwardes, H. Memorials of life and letters. 2 vols. 1886.
Egerton, G. G. Hill warfare on the North-west Frontier of India. 1899.
Elsmie, G. R. Field-Marshal Sir Donald Stewart. 1903.
Thirty-five years in the Punjab. 1908.
ENRiquEz, G. M. D. The Pathan borderland. 19 10.
Ferrier, J. P. History of the Afghans. 1858.
Garavan journeys and wanderings in Persia, Afghanistan, Turkistan, and
Beloochistan, etc. 1856.
Forrest, G. W. Life of Sir N. Ghamberlain. 1909.
Eraser, LovAT. India under Gurzon and afterwards. 191 1.
Frere, H. B. E. Afghanistan and South Africa. 1881.
Frontier and Overseas expeditions from India (confidential) :
Vol. I. Tribes North of Kabul River. 1907.
Vol. I, Supplement A. Operations against the Mohmands. 191 o.
Vol. II. Tribes between Kabul and Gumal Rivers. 1908.
Vol. II, Supplement A. Zakka Khel Afridis. 1908.
Vol. III. Baluchistan and the First Afghan War. 1910.
Gazetteers: Baluchistan, 6 vols. 1908; Bannu, 1883-4; IQO?; Dera Ismail Khan,
1883-4; Hazara, 1883-4; Kohat, 1883-4; Kurram Agency, 1908.
Ghani, a. Review of the political situation in Gentral Asia. 1921.
Green, W. H. R. The retention of Gandahar. 1881.
Grierson, G. a. Linguistic survey of India. Vols, i, viii, x. 1921.
Hamilton, A. Afghanistan. 1906.
Problems of the Middle East. 1909.
Hamley, E. B. The strategical conditions of our Indian North-west Frontier, n.d.
Hanna, H. B. Indian problems. 3 parts. 1895-6.
Hills, J. The Bombay field force, 1880. 1900.
HoLDiCH, T. H. The Indian borderland. 1901.
The gates of India. 19 10.
Holmes, T. Rice. Sir Gharles Napier. 1925.
Hughes, A. W. A Gazetteer of the Province of Sind. 1876.
The country of Balochistan, its geography, topography, ethnology, and
history. 1877.
Hunter, W. W. Indian Musalmans. 1872.
Hutchinson, H. D. The campaign in Tirah. 1898.
Ibbetson, D. Punjab ethnography. 19 16.
Imperial Gazetteer of India. Provincial Series. 3 vols. 1908: Afghanistan; Balu-
chistan; North-west Frontier Province.
Indian Frontier Organisation. 1920.
Innes, J. J. M. Life and times of Sir J. Browne. 1905.
James, L. The Indian Frontier war. 1898.
Keppel, a. J. W. Gun-running and the Indian North-west Frontier. 1911.
Knight, E. F. Where three empires meet. 1893.
Lee-Warner, W. Life of the Marquis of Dalhousie. 2 vols. 1904.
Leitner, G. W. Results of Tour in Dardistan, Kashmir, etc. 1868-73.
On the sciences of language and ethnography with general reference to the
language and customs of the people of Hunza. 1890.
Lorimer, J. G. Grammar and vocabulary of Waziri-Pashto with appendix on
Waziri Gharacteristics. 1902.
Low, G. R. Sir Frederick Roberts. 1883.
Lumsden, H. B. The Mission to Kandahar with report of expeditions into Upper
Meeranzye and Koorrum. i860.
Lyall, A. Life of the Marquis of DufFerin and Ava. 2 vols. 1905.
Macgregor, Gol. G. M. Wanderings in Baluchistan. 1882.
The defence of India. 1884.
Macgregor, Lady. Life and opinions of Sir C. M. Macgregor. 2 vols. 1888.
Martineau, J. Life of Sir Bartle Frere. Vol. i. 1895.
Mason, A. H. Expedition against Isazai Glans on Hazara Border. 1894.
Report on the Hindustani fanatics. 1895.
630 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Muhammad, Ghulam. "Festivals and folk-lore of Gilgit." (Asiatic Society,
vol. I, no. 7.)
Napier, W. Administration of Scinde. 1851.
Nevill, H. L. Campaigns on North-west Frontier, 1 849-1 908. 191 2.
Oliver, E. E. Across the border or Pathan and Biloch. 1890.
Paget, W. H. and Mason, A. H. Record of expeditions against the North-west
Frontier tribes since the annexation of the Punjab. 1885.
Pennell, T. L. Among the wild tribes of the Afghan Frontier. 1909.
Pioneer. Risings on the North-west Frontier. 1898.
Plowden, T. C. Kalid-i- Afghani. 1875.
Raverty, H. G. Ethnographical notes on Afghanistan. 1880-3.
Risley, H. The people of India. 191 5.
Robertson, G. The Kafirs of the Hindu-Kush. 1896.
Chitral. 1898.
Robertson, W. R. Official account of the Chitral Expedition, 1895. 1898.
RoNALDSHAY, Lord. Life of Lord Curzon. Vol.11. 1928.
Rose, H. A. Glossary of tribes and castes of Punjab and North-west Frontier
Province. 3 vols. 191 1.
Shadwell, L.J. Lockhart's advance through Tirah. 1898.
North-west Frontier warfare. 1902.
Shand, A. I. General John Jacob. 1900.
Slessor, a. K. Tirah. 1900.
Smith, R. Bosworth. Life of Lord Lawrence. 2 vols. 1885.
Stein, A. Serindia. Vol. i. 1921.
Sykes, p. Sir Mortimer Durand. 1926.
Tate, G. P. The Frontiers of Baluchistan. 1909.
Temple, R. C. Men and events of my time in India. 1882.
Thomson, H. C. The Chitral campaign. 1895.
Thorburn, S. S. Bannu or our Afghan Frontier. 1876.
Asiatic neighbours. 1894.
Thornton, T. H. Sir Robert Sandeman. 1895.
Vyse, G. W. Southern Afghanistan and the North-west Frontier of India. 1881.
Walker, P. F. Afghanistan. 2 vols. 1885.
Warburton, R. Eighteen years in the Khyber, 1879-98. 1900.
Watson, H. D. Hazara Gazetteer. 1907.
Watteville, H. de. The Waziristan campaign. 1924.
Wolf, L. Life of Lord Ripon. 2 vols. 1921.
Wylly, H. C. From the Black Mountain to Waziristan. 191 2.
Young, K. Scinde in the 'forties. 19 12.
Younghusband, F. E. The relief of Chitral. 1895.
chapter XXVI
INDIA AND THE WAR
Official Publications
India's contribution to the Great War. Published by the authority of the Govern-
ment of India. Calcutta, 1923.
India in 19 17-18. Calcutta, 19 18.
India in 1919. Calcutta, 1920.
Other Works
French, Lord. 191 4. 1919.
Lucas, Sir Charles. The empire at war. Vol. v.
Merew^ther, Lt.-Col. J. W. B. and Smith, Sir F. E. The Indian corps in France.
WiLLCOCKS, (Jen. Sir James. With the Indians in France. 1920.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 631
CHAPTER XXVII
RELATIONS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
WITH THE INDIAN STATES
Published Documents
Parliamentary Papers:
The Nizam, 1854, vols, xlvii, xlviii; 1856, vol. xlv; 1857 (session 2), vol. xxix;
1 867, vol. l; 1867-8, vol. XLix; 1902, vol. lxxi; 1925, G. 2439; 1926,0.2621.
Mysore, 1861, vol. xlvi; 1866, vol. lii; 1867, vol. l; 1878, vol. Lvni; 1881, vol.
LXX.
Tank, 1871, vol. l.
Baroda, 1875, vol. lvi.
Kashmir, 1890, vol. liv.
Manipur, 1 890-1, vol. lix.
Jhalawar, 1896, vol. lxi.
Report of the Indian states (Butler) Committee, 1929, c. 3302.
AiTCHisoN, C. U. Treaties, engagements and sanads. 9 vols. 1909.
Correspondence with Turab Ali Sir Salar Jung relating to the visit of H.R.H. the
Prince of Wales to India. 1876.
Plowden, T. C. Precis of correspondence relating to the affairs of Mysore, 1 799-
1878. Calcutta, 1878.
Other Works
Bell, Evans. The rajah and principality of Mysore. 1865.
The Mysore reversion. 1866.
Retrospects and prospects of Indian policy. 1 868.
Holkar's appeal. 1881.
Memoir of General John Briggs. 1885.
Bhopal, Begam of. History of Bhopal. Tr. H. C. Barstow. Calcutta, 1876.
BiLGRAMi, Sayyid HusAiN. Mcmoir of Sir Salar Jang. 1883.
BowRiNG, L. Eastern experiences. 1871.
Briggs, H. G. The Nizam our faithful ally. 1861.
British administration of Mysore by a native. 1874.
British crown and the Indian states:... drawn up on behalf of the standing com-
mittee of the Chamber of Princes. 1929.
Daly, Major H. Memoirs of General Sir Herbert D. Daly. 1905.
HiCKEY, William. The Tanjore Mahratta principality. 1874.
HoLDSwoRTH, Sir William. "The Indian states and India." {Law Quarterly
Review, vol. xlvi, October, 1930.)
Gwalior state Gazetteer. 1908.
Lee-Warner, Sir William. The native states of India. 191 o.
MiRZA Mehdy Khan. Hyderabad state. 1910.
Newton, Lord. Lord Lansdowne. 1929.
Panikkar, K. M. Introduction to the study of the relations of Indian states with
the Government of India. 1927.
RoNALDSHAY, Lord. Life of Lord Curzon. Vol, 11. 1928.
RoussELET, Louis. India and its native priuccs. Revised by Lt. -Col. Buckle. 1878.
Temple, Sir Richard. Journals in Hyderabad and Kashmir. 2 vols. 1887.
Thornton, T. H. General Sir Richard Meade and the feudatory states of Central
and Southern India. 1898.
632 BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER XXVIII
LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
Published Documents
At present most of the information about local self-government in British India
must be sought in publications of the Government of India which are of
various descriptions:
Report on the Moral and Material Progress of the People of India which has
been annually submitted to Parliament from i860.
Provincial Administration Reports which start from different dates :
Panjab from 1849.
Bengal, Bombay, Madras and North-Western Provinces from 1855.
Oudh from 1858, merging with those of North-Western Provinces from 1877,
the two together being called, from 1901, United Provinces.
British Burma and Central Provinces from 1 86 1 .
Assam from 1874.
Proceedings of the legislative councils which give a more vivid picture than the
ordinary government report :
India (Governor-General) from 1854.
Bombay, Bengal and Madras from 1862.
Panjab, North-Western Provinces and Oudh from 1897.
Parliamentary Papers, 1883 (Proposals for extension of local government),
House of Commons paper 93, vol. i.
Annals of Indian Administration, 1 86 1 .
Report of Committee on Local Self-Government in Madras, 1882.
Report of Municipality Taxation Committee, United Provinces, 1909.
Decentralisation Commission Report, 1909.
Bengal District Administration Commission Report, 19 14.
Monograph no. 8 of Panjab Government Record Office Publications by Amar
Nath, M.A.
Imperial Gazetteer, vol. iv.
Other Works
Carstairs, R. British work in India. Edinburgh and London, 1891.
Plea for the better local government of Bengal. 1904.
GooDE, W. S. Municipal Calcutta. Edinburgh, 19 16.
Hart, S. G. Introduction to self-government in rural Bengal. Calcutta, 1920, 1922.
Howell, A. Education in British India. Calcutta, 1872.
Masani, R. p. Evolution of self-government in Bombay. 1929.
Matthai, John. Village government in India. 1915.
MoRELAND, W. H. India at the death of Akbar. 1920.
From Akbar to Aurangzeb. 1923.
The agrarian system of Moslem India. Cambridge, 1929.
CHAPTERS XXIX-XXXI
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS TO 1909
Printed Documents
Indian National Congress, annual reports, printed in India from 1885 (the resolu-
tions passed up to 1914 are abstracted in Mrs Besant, How India wrought for
freedom^ Madras, 191 5).
Parliamentary Debates. See Hansard for 1907, 1908, 1909.
Parliamentary Papers:
East India Councils, 1890, G. 5950, and 1894, 86.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 633
Papers relating to an imperial advisory council, and provincial advisory councils,
enlargement of legislative councils, etc., 1907, 3710.
Proposals of the Government of India, and dispatches of the secretary of state,
1907, 3710, and 1908, 4426.
Replies of the local governments, 1908, 4435, 4436.
Representation of Muhammadans on legislative councils, 1909, 4652.
Regulations for giving effect to the Indian Councils Act, 1909, 1910, 4987.
Revised regulations, 191 3, 6714.
Regulations and rules for the legislative council in the Central Provinces, 19 14,
7370. ,. . .
Report of the sedition committee, 191 8, 9190.
Report of the Bengal District Administration Committee, 191 3-14. Calcutta,
1915-
The King-Emperor vs. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, tried by the High Court of Judi-
cature, Bombay, 1908.
Proceedings of the Bengal Legislative Council, 7 January, 1925.
Other Works
Balfour, Lady Betty. Personal and literary letters of Lord Lytton. 2 vols. 1906.
Besant, Annie. India a nation. 19 15.
How India wrought for freedom. 191 5.
Blunt, W. S. Ideas about India. 1885.
India under Ripon. 1909.
BucHAN, John. Lord Minto, a memoir. 1924. y^
Chailley, J. Administrative problems of British India. Tr. Meyer. 1910. '^
Chesney, G. M. India under experiment. 19 18.
Chirol, Sir V. Indian unrest. 1910.
India old and new. 1921.
India. 1926.
Cotton, Sir Henry. New India. 1885.
Indian and home memories. 191 1.
Cross, C. M. P. Development of self-government in India, 1858-19 14. Chicago,
1922.
DiGBY, W. Prosperous British India. 1901.
DoNOGH, M. History of the law of sedition. Calcutta, 191 7.
DuRAND, Sir M. Life of Sir Alfred Lyall. 191 3.
Farq^uhar, J. N. Modern religious movements in India. 1918.
Frere, Sir H. B. Means of ascertaining public opinion in India. 1871.
Gilchrist, R. N. Indian nationality.
Gokhale, G. K. Speeches. Madras, 1909.
Heroes of the hour (Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, and Sir Subramania Iyer).
Madras, 19 18.
Hunter, Sir W. W. The Indian Musnlmans. 1876.
Lawrence, Sir W. R. The India we served. 1928.
LiLLiNGSTON, F. The Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj. 1901.
LovETT, Sir Verney. History of the Indian nationalist movement. 191 9.
Lyall, Sir A. C. Life of Lord Dufferin. 1905.
Macdonald, J. Ramsay. The government of India. 1920.
MiTRA, S. M. '* Analysis of Indian unrest." {Quarterly Review, 191 1, xcv, 142 sqq.)
MoDY, H. P. Sir Pherozeshah Mehta. Bombay, 192 1.
MoRisoN, Sir T. Industrial organisation of an Indian province. 1906.
Economic transition in India. 191 1.
Morley, John. Speeches on Indian affairs. 1909.
Recollections. 2 vols. 191 7.
Ratcliffe, S. K. Sir William Wedderburn. 1923.
RoNALDSHAY, Lord. The heart of Aryavarta. 1925.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan. The truth about the khilafat. 191 6.
The present state of Indian politics. Allahabad, 1888.
Surendranath Banerjee, Sir. A nation in making. 1925.
634 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sydenham, Lord. My working life. 1927.
TiLAK, B. G. Writings and speeches. Madras, 1922.
Wedderburn, Sir William. Allan Octavian Hume. 19 13.
Wolf, F. Life of Lord Ripon. 2 vols. 1921.
CHAPTERS xxxn and xxxiii
POLITICAL MOVEMENTS, 1909-1919
Published Documents
Chelmsford, Lord. Speeches delivered in India. Simla, 1919.
Indian National Congress reports (see p. 632, supra).
Parliamentary debates: 19 15, 191 8, 1919.
Parliamentary Papers:
Report of the Royal Commission on Decentralisation in India, 1908, 4360.
The Press Act of 1910, etc., 1910, 5269.
Coronation Darbar, 191 1, 5979.
Executive council for the United Provinces, 19 15 (Lords), 49.
Montagu-Chelmsford Report, 191 8, 9109.
Sedition Committee Report, 191 8, 9190.
Report on the Bengal detenus, 191 8, 9198.
Addresses presented in India to the viceroy and secretary of state, 19 18, 9178.
Report of the joint select committees on the Government of India bill, 1919, 97.
Dispatch from the Government of India, 191 9, 123.
Report of Lord Southborough's committees, 1919, C. 141, 103, 176.
Report of Lord Crewe's committee on the home administration of Indian affairs,
1919, 207.
Recommendations of the Government of India on the demarcation between
central and provincial revenues, 19 19, 334.
Report of committee on the disturbances in the Panjab, etc., 1920, 681.
Report of committee to advise on financial relations between central and pro-
vincial governments in India, 1920, 724.
Rules for election to provincial legislative councils, 1920, 812, and to the central
legislature, 1920, 813.
Rules under ss. i, 2, 4(3), 10(3), 12, and 33, Government of India Act, 1919,
1920,891.
Results of elections in India, 1921, 1261.
Constitutional reforms (Simon Commission Report), 1930, C. 3568 and 3569.
Curtis, L. Dyarchy. 1920.
Montagu, E. S. An Indian diary. 1930.
Other Works
Craddock, Sir R. The dilemma in India. 1929.
Dodwell, H. Sketch of the history of India, 1858-1918. 1925.
Doke, J. S. M.K.Gandhi. 1909.
Har Dayal. Forty-four months in Germany and Turkey. February, 19 15, to
October, 191 8. 1920.
Ilbert, Sir Courtney. The coronation durbar and its consequences. 191 3.
Keith, A. B. Imperial unity of the dominions. 19 16.
Macdonald, J. Ramsay. The awakening of India. 1910.
MiTRA, S. M. "Analysis of Indian unrest." {Quarterly Review, 191 1> xcv, 142 sqq.)
O'DwYER, Sir Michael. India as I knew it. 1925.
Ronaldshay, Lord. Life of Lord Curzon. 1928.
635
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
1818 Diocese of Calcutta inaugurated.
181 9 Expedition to the Persian Gulf.
Mountstuart Elphinstone governor of Bombay.
1820 Sir Thomas Munro governor of Madras.
Bishop's College founded at Calcutta.
1 82 1 The Samachar Darpan founded.
1822 Heber bishop of Calcutta.
The Native Education Society founded at Bombay.
1823 Lord Amherst governor-general.
Supreme Court of Judicature established at Bombay.
1824 First Burmese War.
1825 Voyage of the steamship Enterprise to India.
1827 Death of Sir Thomas Munro.
Sir John Malcolm governor of Bombay.
1828 Lord William Bentinck governor-general.
Enquiry into freehold titles in Bengal and the Upper Provinces.
The Brahmo Samaj founded.
1829 Sleeman commissioner for the suppression of thagi.
Launch of the Hugh Lindsay at Bombay.
Regulation prohibiting sati.
1830 Rebellion in Mysore.
Ram Mohun Roy visits England.
1 83 1 Administration of Mysore assumed by the British.
1832 Jaintia annexed.
1833 Lord William Bentinck commander-in-chief.
The Company's trading rights abolished.
Centralisation of legislative power.
1834 War with Coorg.
Indian magistrates appointed.
Macaulay law member.
Disturbances at Kimedi.
Province of Agra formed.
1835 Corporal punishment of sepoys abolished.
Sir Charles Metcalfe acting governor-general.
Press restrictions abolished.
1836 Lord Auckland governor-general.
Diocese of Bombay established.
1839 First Afghan War.
1 840 Cautley's Jumna Canal report.
1842 Lord Ellenborough governor-general.
1 843 Annexation of Sind.
Slavery prohibited in British India.
1844 Ellenborough recalled.
Sir Henry Hardinge governor-general.
English education declared a qualification for public service.
1845 Danish possessions sold to the English.
First Sikh War.
1847 Sir George Clerk governor of Bombay.
Sati prohibited in Sindhia's territory.
Engineering College founded at Rurki.
1848 Lord Dalhousie governor-general.
Second Sikh War.
1849 Annexation of the Panjab.
Drinkwater Bethune establishes a school for Hindu girls.
Moplah rising.
1852 Second Burmese War.
Wahabi conspiracy discovered at Patna.
636 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
1853 Sir John Lawrence chief commissioner of the Panjab.
Railway opened from Bombay to Thana.
Assignment of Berar.
Telegraph line from Calcutta to Agra begun.
Annexation of Nagpur.
The Company's charter renewed; considerable changes made in the
legislative council.
Bengal placed under a lieutenant-governor. ^ j^ r* ;
The covenanted civil service to be recruited by competition.
1 855 Treaty with Dost Muhammad.
Sonthal rebellion.
1856 Annexation of Oudh.
Lord Canning governor-general.
War with Persia. ., :
1857 Further treaty with Dost Muhammad. - 1 ^
Sir Henry Lawrence chief commissioner of Oudh.
Outbreak of the Indian Mutiny.
Delhi recovered.
Havelock and Outram reach Lucknow.
Sir Colin Campbell relieves Lucknow.
1858 Sir Hugh Rose's campaign in Central India.
Sir Colin Campbell reduces Oudh.
Government of India to be conducted in the name of the queen.
1859 The White Mutiny.
James Wilson first finance member.
1 860 Issue of sanads of adoption.
The Nil Darpan produced.
1 86 1 The Order of the Star of India instituted.
Famine in the North-Western Provinces.
1862 The Penal Code introduced.
Lord Elgin governor-general.
Sir Bartle Frere governor of Bombay.
Amalgamation of the Supreme and sadr courts into High Courts.
1863 Dost Muhammad takes Herat and dies.
Afghan War of Succession.
Ambela campaign.
1 864 Sir John Lawrence governor-general.
The Bhutan War.
1 865 Telegraphic communication with Europe opened.
The Orissa famine.
1868 Sher Ali receives an annual grant of 6 lakhs.
Panjab Tenancy Act passed.
Railway opened from Ambala to Delhi.
1869 Lord Mayo governor-general.
Conference at Ambala.
1870 Yakub's rebellion in Afghanistan.
Mayo's first provincial settlement.
1 87 1 Engineering College at Cooper's Hill opened.
1872 The Kuka revolt.
Lord Northbrook governor-general.
The Seistan boundary report.
1873 The Russians reduce Khiva.
The Simla Conference.
1874 The Bihar famine.
Lord Salisbury secretary of state for India.
1875 The Gaekwar's case.
Mayo College, Ajmer, opened.
Visit of the Prince of Wales.
1876 The Royal Titles Act.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 637
1876 Lord Lytton governor-general.
Treaty with Kalat.
The queen proclaimed empress of India.
Proposed mission to Afghanistan.
Famine in the Deccan.
1877 Lytton 's Delhi durbar.
Famine extends northwards.
Famine insurance introduced into the budget.
1878 Vernacular Press Act.
Indian troops sent to Malta.
StolietofF's mission to Kabul.
Second x\fghan War.
Flight of Sher Ali.
1879 Treaty of Gandammak.
Murder of Gavagnari at Kabul.
Yakub abdicates.
Kabul reoccupied.
1880 Lord Ripon governor-general.
Battle of Maiwand.
Roberts' march to Kandahar.
Abd-ur-rahman recognised as amir of Kabul.
1 88 1 Abd-ur-rahman occupies Kandahar.
1882 Hindu-Muslim riots at Salem.
1883 The Ilbert bill.
1884 Merv occupied by the Russians.
Russo-Afghan frontier commission appointed.
Lord Dufferin governor-general.
1885 First meeting of the Indian National Gongress.
The Franco-Burmese treaty.
The Panjdeh incident.
The Bengal Tenancy Act.
Abd-ur-rahman at Rawalpindi.
Bengal Local Self-Government Act.
Third Burmese War.
Gwalior fort restored to Sindhia.
1886 Annexation of Upper Burma.
Afghan northern boundary delimited.
Hindu-Muslim riots at Delhi.
1887 Ghilzai revolt in Afghanistan.
1888 Ishak Khan's rebellion.
Hazara punitive expedition.
Lord Lansdowne governor-general.
1889 Abdication of the Maharajah of Kashmir.
Second visit of the Prince of Wales.
1 89 1 Factory Act.
Age of Gonsent Act.
Manipur rebellion.
1 892 Indian Gouncils Act introduces the principle of election.
Death of Sandeman.
1 893 Hindu-Muslim riots at Bombay.
The Durand Mission to Kabul.
1 894 Lord Elgin governor-general.
The Opium Gommission.
1 895 Final settlement of the Russo-Afghan frontier.
The Ghitral expedition.
1896 Indians in Natal lose the franchise.
1897 Plague at Bombay.
Murder of Rand and Ayerst at Poona.
Frontier risings.
638 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
1898 Dorjieff's first mission to Russia.
1899 Lord Curzon governor-general.
1900 North-West Frontier Province formed.
1 90 1 Habib-ullah amir of Afghanistan.
1904 The Younghusband expedition to Tibet.
1905 The Dane Treaty with the amir.
The partition of Bengal.
Lord Minto governor-general.
Qjuetta-Nushki Railway completed.
John Morley secretary of state for India.
1906 Habib-uUah's visit to India.
1 907 The Anglo-Russian Convention.
Attempt on Sir Andrew Fraser.
Congress split at Surat.
Entrance of Indians into the Transvaal restricted.
1908 Tilak convicted of sedition.
The Newspapers Act.
1909 Morley-Minto reforms become law.
S. P. Sinha appointed to the governor-general's council.
Proposal to establish an executive council in the United Provinces.
191 o Newspapers (Incitement to Offences) Act.
Recruitment of indentured labour for South Africa suspended.
Arms traffic checked by blockading the Persian Gulf.
Lord Hardinge governor-general.
Lord Crewe secretary of state for India.
191 1 The Delhi durbar.
Transfer of the capital to Delhi announced.
The partition of Bengal revoked.
1 91 2 The Balkan War and Indian Muslim excitement.
Attempt on Lord Hardinge.
1 9 1 3 Hardinge's pronouncement regarding Indian grievances in South Africa.
1 9 1 4 Outbreak of the German War.
Expedition to Mesopotamia.
1 9 15 The Defence of India Act.
Sir Austen Chamberlain secretary of state for India.
191 6 The Home Rule Movement.
The Lucknow Pact of the Muslim League and the National Congress.
Lord Chelmsford governor-general.
1917 Expedition into Waziristan.
Mr E. S. Montagu secretary of state for India.
Mr Montagu's declaration in the House of Commons.
The Rowlatt Committee appointed.
1 918 The war with Germany comes to an end.
Mr Montagu's visit to India.
1919 The Rowlatt Acts passed.
Habib-uUah's murder.
The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms become law.
INDEX
Abadan pipe line, 479
Abbasid khalifas, 577
Abdul Hamid II, 466
Abdullah Jan, 411, 412, 417
Abdur Rahim, Sir, 377
Ab-dur-rahman, Amir, 405, 407, 412, 417,
420-2, 424-6, 428, 461, 462, 465
Abkari department, in Madras, 54, 55; in
Bombay, 62 ; in the United Provinces, 86
Adalati, the, 8g
Adam, Mr, 105
Adam, William, his reports on education,
100, loi. III, 1 13-15
Adam Khel Afridis, the, 452
Adams, Benjamin, 121
Adamson, Sir Hervey, 441
Adda Mullah, the, see Najm-ud-din
Addiscombe Cadet College, 161, 397
Aden, 59, 150, 261, 266, 381, 480; port
trust at, 263
Adlercron, Colonel John, 154
Administrator-general's Act, 259
Admiralty, the, 152
Admiralty jurisdiction, 260
Adrianople, 578
Adye, Sir John, 464
Afghanistan, 165; the first war with, 171,
409; treaty of 1857, 190, 404, 405; rela-
tions with, during the Mutiny, 193, 462;
policy towards, after the Mutiny, 214,
405 sqq. ; Seistan boundary of, 311;
second war with, 397, 400, 419, 458;
later relations with, /^2^ sqq., 460, 485;
frontier intrigues of, 460-3 ; raiders from,
474
Africa, east coast of, 152
Afridi tribes, 452, 454, 456, 458, 465, 470,
471,473,475
Afzal Khan, killed by Sivaji, 550
Afzal Khan, 405, 406
Afzal-ul-mulk, 461
Age of Consent Act, the, 394, 549, 550, 558
Agency tracts, the, 269
Agra, province of, 8; city of, 78, 297;
college at, 105; during the Mutiny, 178,
180, 196, 198
Agra Canal, the, 283
Agricultural education, 349
Agricultural research, 241, 265, 271, 272,
289, 290, 312, 352
Ahmadabad, 60, 64, 260, 586
Ahmadnagar, 59, 60, 65, 66, 133; police
corps, 71
Ain-i-Akbari, the, 127, 535
Aitchison, Sir Charles, 366, 441
Aix-la-chapelle, Peace of, 154
Ajab Khan, 461
Ajit Singh, 553
Ajmer, 345, 346
Ajmer-Merwara, 238
Aka Khel Afridis, the, 465
Akbar, 127
Alambagh, the, 189, 197, 199, 203
Alexander II, 408
Ali Masjid, 418
Alibag taliika, the, 59; attack on, 145
Aligarh, 345, 577
All India Muslim League, the, 582, 587, 590
Allahabad, during the Mutiny, 18 1-4, 187,
196, 198, 199, 205; university at, 348;
High Court at, 380
Allen, Mr, 552
Alwar, 297, 482, 498
Aman-ullah, 430
Aman-ul-mulk, 461
Amarapura, 433
Ambala, 175, 177, 410. 4^2, 530
Amherst, Lord, his recall considered, 13;
petitioned by Ram Mohan Roy, 105;
hesitates about suppressing sati, 140
Amin Khan, 405
Amritsar, Treaty of, 87; city, 190, 194, 530,
586
Anaimalai forests, 272
Anand Marriage Act, the, 394
Anandrava Dhulap, 147
Anantapur, 40
Andaman Islands, the, 150, 181, 238, 240
Angad, 187, 189
Anglo-Indians, 162
Anglo-Japanese alliance, the, 426
Anglo-Russian Convention, the, 232, 428,
473, 577
Angria, 58, 144, 146
Anson, General, 175, 177, 182
Anusilan Samiti, the, 578
Arab tribesmen, as mercenaries, 38; the
Ben-ibu-Ali, 149; the Beni-yas, 150
Arabian Sea, pirates in the, 144
Arabic studies, 100, 102, 104, 112, 118, 345
Arabindo Ghose, 555
Arakan, 20, 23, 439, 441; Local Battalion,
442
Arakanese, the, 36
Arbabs, the, 461
Archaeology, 242
Arcot, districts of, 44; town of, 154, 163
Argyll, the Duke of, 18, 360; his views on
the Council of India, 213, 214; attempts
legislative control, 237, 244; on the per-
manent settlement, 248, 249 ; his Central
Asian policy, 411, 412, 416, 422, 423
Ariancopang, 154
Armies, the, of the East India Company,
'f 53 ^19- 1 their reorganisation after the
Mutiny, 395
Arms Act, the, 539
Arms traffic, the, 473, 474
640
INDEX
Army, the Indian, dual control of, 215, 229,
231; development of, 395^9^.; amalga-
mation of the presidency armies, 399,
400; reorganised in 1907, 400; re-
organised in 1922, 401, 402; functions of,
476; employment in 1914, 479, 480;
eligible for the V.G., 576
Army Council, the, 221
Army in India Committee, the, 476
Armytage, Commodore, 147
Arrack, 54, 55
Arrah, 181, 200
Artillery, absorption of the East India
Company's, 395
Arya Samaj, the, 539, 540
Asirgarh, 201
Asmar, 461
Asquith, H., Lord, 220
Assam, 20-3, 25, 219, 239, 245, 341, 361,
371, 501, 576; population of, 238; re-
cruitment in, 402; villages in, 512;
governor in council in, 595
Auckland, Lord, 13, 14; his educational
policy, 114
Aurangzib, 554
Australia, wheat imported from, 311
Austria, 490
Auxiliary Force, the, 402
Ava, 150
A\dtabile, General, 450
Ayerst, Lieutenant, murder of, 550
Ayub Khan, 422
Azim Khan, 405, 406
Babti, the, 62
Badakshan, 409
Badal, 470
Baghdad, 481, 577
Bagwell, Commodore, 146
Bahawalpur, Curzon's speech at, 505
BaiUie, Colonel, 156
Baji Rao II, 70, 167; discourages sati, 132
Bajour, 463-5, 47i> 473
Baker, Sir Edward, 568, 580
Baku, 485
Balance of Indian trade, the, 330
Balfour, Arthur, Lord, 544, 569
Balkan War, the, 577, 578, 584
Balkh, 415, 421
Baluch tribes, 448, 449, 453, 455, 456, 466
Baluchi, 452
Baluchistan, and the agency, 455, 458, 459,
461, 466-6, 472
Banda district, 77
Bangabasi, the, 549
Bangalore, 482
Bangash, the, 471
Bangkok, 584
Baniya caste, the, 134
Bankot, 58
Bannu, 191, 451,467, 468
Banthira, 199
Bar, 283
Barasat, cadet college at, 161
Bareilly, 203
Barh, 143
Bari Doab, the, 93, 284
Barlow, Sir George, 164
Barnard, Sir Henry, 177, 178, 192, 193
Barnes, Mr, 192
Barnes, Sir Hugh, 441
Baroda, 60, 130, 259, 307, 499, 501 ; treaties
with, 489, 491
Barrackpore, 13, 162, 166, 174, 175
Bassein, 146; Treaty of, 167
Battray, James, 133
Bayley, Sir E. C, 452
Bayley, Sir Stuart, 246
Beaconsfield, Lord, see Disraeli, Benjamin
Beas, the, 75, 93
Belgaum, 59, 66, 67
Belgium, 480
Bellary, 164, 267
Benares, 20, 34, 75, 76, 83, 129, 138, 281,
560; Hindu College at, 96, 99, 106, 1 1 1 ;
during the Mutiny, 181, 182, 184, 199,
200; Queen's College at, 348; Central
Hindu College at, 354; terrorism at, 578,
579> 583
Bengal, Bay of, 149; surveyed, 152
Bengal, presidency of Fort William in, 3 ;
reduced in 1833, 8, 9; deputy governor
of, 9, 22; lieutenant-governor of, 19, 22,
239; extent of, 20, 21, 245; administra-
tion of, 21 sqq., 77, 245^9^.; thagi and
dacoity in, 32 sqq. ; effects of the Mutiny
on, 35, 36; education in, 36, 95 sqq., 339,
346-8, 350, 351; regulations of, 76, 77;
middle and upper classes in, 95, 251;
religious policy in, 122 sqq.; Indian
Christians in, 125; extent of sati in, 138;
army of, 155 sqq.; the Mutiny in, 163,
171 sqq.; army demoralised, 166; army
reorganised, 396 sqq.; partition of, 217,
219, 239, 245, 248, 252, 352, 551, 576,
588; legislative council in, 236, 546;
population of, 238; governor and council
of, 239, 245, 568; law courts in, 247;
tenancy law in, 249, 250, 545; District
Administration Committee in, 253, 254;
proprietary colleges in, 337; aborigines
in, 344; poHtical agitation in, 352, 551,
554, 558 ; recruitment in, 402 ; terrorism in,
485, 557, 559, 574, 575, 582, 585; villages
in, 512, 514; rural boards in, 520-2;
chamber of commerce of, 527; muni-
cipalities in, 532, 533, 535, 537; octroi
duties in, 535
Bengal Asiatic Society, the, 96, 114
Bengali prose literature, 99; newspapers,
106, 119
Ben-ibu-Ali Arabs, 1 49
Ben-i-yas Arabs, 1 50
Bentham, Jeremy, 384, 388
Bentinck, Lord William, 12, 24-6, 77, 78,
82, 83, 152; his educational policy, 109,
111-15, 117, 120; suppresses sati, 131,
140 sqq.
INDEX
641
Berar, 76, 239, 240, 278, 281, 306, 307, 400
Berhampore, mutiny at, 1 74
Berlin, Congress of, 417
Berlin, Treaty of, 418, 419
Bernadotte, Marshal, 158
Bernard, Sir G. E., 437, 439, 441, 443
Besant, Mrs A., 354, 487, 584
Best, Captain, 144
Bet island, 150
Bethune, J. E. D., 116, 384
Betwa Canal, 284
Bhadralok, the, 251, 252, 551, 557
Bhagalpur Hill tribes, 36
Bhagavad Gita, the, 550, 552
Bhamo, 433, 434, 439
Bhandaris, the, 69
Bharatpur, 482
Bhawani, 33
Bhil Corps, the, 71, 201; chiefs, 255
Bhittannis, the, 454
Bhonsla family of Nagpur, the, 75
Bhopal, 201
Bhumij, the, 35
Bhupendranath Basu, 592
Bibigarh, the, at Cawnpore, 184, 187, 188
Bible, the, translated into Indian vernacu-
lars, 99, 122; into Malay, 100; used as
class-book, 106, 124
Bible Society, the, 123
Bibliotheca Indica, 114
Bigandet, Bishop, 432
Bihar, 20-3, 134, 143, 352, 552; mutiny in,
180, 181, 196, 200, 246; famine in, 300,
306; political crime in, 579; governor in
council of, 595
Bihar and Orissa, province of, 219, 239,
245, 380, 576; population of, 238
Bihari Lai Gupta, 359
Bijapur district, 59
Bikaner, 477, 482
Bimetallism, 323
Bipin Chandra Pal, 354, 553
Bird, R. M., 82
Birkenhead, Lord, 244
Birmal, 461, 463
Bishop's College, Calcutta, 105
Black Mountain, the, 461
Blavatsky, Mme, 540
Blood feud, the, 470-2
Boad, Khond tribes of, 40
Board of Control, the, 3 ; its relations with
the East India Company, 12-16, 211;
controls foreign policy, 14; the president's
salary, 16, 17; abolished, 208
Board of Education, at Bombay, 68
Board of Revenue, in Bengal, 8, 24, 78,
246; in Madras, 41, 53-5, 271, 272
Board of Trade, at Madras, 41, 53
Boer War, the, 581
Bogra district, the, 249
Bokhara, 404, 407-9, 413
Bolan Pass, the, 418, 459
Bolpur, 354
Bombay, the, 147
Bombay Army, the, 67
Bombay diocese, the, 74; bishop of, 124,
125
Bombay Education Society, the, 68
Bombay Marine, the, 58, i/^sqq.
Bombay municipality, the, 512, 523-6
Bombay Native Education Society, the, 68
Bombay Port Trust, the, 149, 263
Bombay Presidency, the, extent of, 58;
government of, 58 sqq., 67, 239, 243, 257,
570; district organisation in, Qo sqq.,
255 -f?^-; justice in, Qosqq., 259 sqq., 379,
380; land-revenue in, 60 sqq., 256 sqq.;
post office in, 68; education in, 68, 69,
107, 108, 117; police system in, 69,
70; Indian Christians in, 125; female
infanticide in, 130; sati in, 132, 136, 142;
shipbuilding in, i4^sqq.; army of, 153^^^.,
400; mutiny in, 162, 200, 201 ; population
of> 238, 399, 400; forests in, 364; minor
states under, 255, 256; secretariat of,
258, 259; customs dues in, 266; famine
in, 300, 301, 306, 307; aborigines in,
344; female education in, 345; poHtical
agitation and crime in, 369, 555, 556,
558, 585; code in, 383; recruitment in,
402; rural boards in, 520; munici-
palities in, 530-3, 535 ; octroi dues in, 535,
536; legislative council in, 546, 601
Bombay University, the, 118, 119, 336, 340
Bombay-Burma Trading Company, the,
438
Boone, Charles, 144
Bori valley, the, 461
Borneo, 150
Borrodaile, — , 389
Boscawen, Admiral, 154
Bourbon cotton, 271
Bradlaugh, Charles, 544
Brahman caste, the, 96, 100, loi, 107, 133,
i35-9> 158, I59> 166, 169, 174, 270, 344,
348, 549, 558, 600
Brahmaputra, the, 341
Brahmo Samaj, the, 538-40
Brahuis, the, 455, 466
Brandis, Sir Dietrich, 364, 444
Brasyer, Captain, 182, 187
Bridges, J. E., 439
Bright, John, 223
Brihaspati, 389
British Baluchistan, 238, 240, 456, 473
British Burma Municipal Act, 533
British Columbia, ghadr movement in, 582
British Indian Association, 538, 545
British Medical Association, 376
British-born subjects, admitted freely to
India, 2, 3, 5, 124; licensed by Board of
Control, 1 02, 103, 124; jurisdiction over,
379> 380, 387
Broach, 58, 63, 64, 260
Brodie, Sergeant, 163
Brodrick, St John, Lord Midleton, 428
Brooke, M. H., 133, 143
Browne, Colonel Horace, 433
CHI VI
41
642
INDEX
Bruce, R. I., 455
Brunnow, Baron, 409
Bubonic plague, see Plague
Buckingham, J. S., 15
Buckinghamshire, Lord, see Hobart, Lord
Buckle, G. E., 219
Buddhism, 540; monasteries, 339; law of,
389, 394; Fifth Council, 433; organisa-
tion in Burma, 440, 441 ; education, 444,
445
Budget discussions, 572
Bugtis, the, 448, 453, 454
Bulgaria, 578
Bunbury, G. E., 469
Bundelkhand, 75, 77, 135, 201, 202, 284,
290
Buner, 465, 473
Bunerwals, the, 461
Burdwan, 138
Burke, Edmund, i, 96, 404
Burma, rivers of, surveyed, 152; legislative
council in, 236; population, 238; govern-
ment of, 240; rice exports from, 300,
311 ; education in, 339, 340; annexation
of Upper, 370, 398, 399, 438-40, 540;
administration of, 371, 441 sqg.; military
officers employed in, 375, 442, 443; law
courts in, 381 ; regiments raised in, 399,
442; division, 400; kingdom of Upper,
432 sqg. ; royal trade in, 434; immigration
into, 445-7; wolfram in, 483; munici-
palities in, 532; legislative council in,
564> 570
Burmese war, the first, 13, 20; the second,
150; the third, 438, 439
Burrows, Brigadier, 422
Bushire, 150
Butler, Sir Harcourt, 353, 441
Bythesea, Admiral, 150, 151
Gabinet, the, 211, 213, 220, 221, 229, 232
Gadets, i6i
Galcapur, 20
Galcutta, University of, 118, 119, 336, 338,
340, 345, 347; Bishop of, 124; frequency
of sati near, 134-6, 138; during the
Mutiny, 174, 180; transfer of capital
from, 219, 576; administration of, 246;
high court at, 247; development of, 251 ;
medical college at, 344; municipality of,
512, 523-8; trades association at, 527;
chamber of commerce at, 546 ; political
crime in, 557
Galcutta Suburbs Act, 532
Gambay, Nawab of, 60
Gamel Gorps, 477
Gameron, C. H., 384
Gameroons, the, 479, 480
Gampbell, Sir Golin, 196-200, 202-4
Gampbell, Sir George, 22, 29, 37, 246,
298-300
Gampbell, Sir John, 310
Ganada, 541, 560
Canara, 38, 41, 44
Gannanore, 164; the Bibi of, 268
Ganning, George, 13
Ganning Lord, 28, 35, 36, 119, 173-5, 177,
178, 180-2, 184, 185, 193, 196, 199, 200,
203-6, 208, 226-8, 230, 234, 235, 341,
^ 395» 403. 458, 468, 493, 494
Gape Golony, 581
Garey, William, 98, 99, no, 119, 122, 123,
128, 134
Garmichael, Lord, 598
Garnatic (Bombay), 61, 66, 67
Garr, Dr, 74
Cartridges, the greased, 173, 174, 176, 204
Gary, Gaptain H., 153
Caspian ports, English consuls excluded
from, 405
Caste, in the Bengal Army, 17 1-3; and
education, 343, 344, 350; absent in
Burma, 446; councils, 595
Castro, Manuel de, 144
Caucasus, the, 485
Cautley, Sir P., 85
Cavagnari, Sir Louis, 419, 420, 436, 456
Gawnpore, during the Mutiny, 182-4,
i87-9> i97> 199; agricultural college at,
290; terminal tax at, 536; mosque dis-
pute at, 577, 578
Ceded and Conquered Provinces, 20, 75;
position of collectors in, 77; land-revenue
in, 80 sqq.
Ceded districts, 44, 47, 50
Central Asia, hemp imports from, 289;
question of, 403 sqq.
Central India Agency, during the Mutiny,
201-3; famine in, 307
Central Provinces, 75, 76, 468; population
of, 238, 361 ; formation of, 239; police in,
276, 277; law courts in, 278, 381; land-
revenue of, 280, 281 ; irrigation in, 284,
285; famines in, 285, 286, 306, 307;
forests in, 287; excise in, 287, 288; opium
in, 289; agriculture in, 290; co-operative
credit in, 291; education in, 340; abori-
gines in, 344; rural boards in, 519, 520;
municipalities in, 532, 533; octroi duties
inj 535> 536; poHtical agitation in, 553,
555 J governor in council in, 595; legisla-
tive council in, 601
Centralisation, consequences of, 374
"Certification", 598
Ceylon, 147, 164, 340
Chagai caravan route, 474
Ghaitanya, 538
Chakdarra, 465, 467
Chakran lands, 26
Chalweshtis, 471
Chaman, New, 459
Ghambal, the, 203
Chamber of Princes, the, 509
Chamberlain, Sir Austen, 220-2, 487, 589
Chamberlain, Major Crawford, 191
Chamberlain, General Sir Neville, 191, 195,
418, 464
Chamia, 465
INDEX
643
Ghandernagore, 132, 146
Ghapekar, D. and B., 550
Ghaplains, 120
Gharbagh Bridge (at Lucknow), 189
Gharles II, 153
GharterAct, the, of 1793, 10,357; of 181 3,
2, 379; of 1833, 3sqq., iii, 240, 379; of
1853, i^sqq., 223
Ghattar Manzil, the (at Lucknow), 189, 199
Chaukidars, in Bengal, 26, 27, 247
Chauth, the, 62
Chelas, loi
Ghelmsford, second Baron, 464
Ghelmsford, Viscount, 222, 223, 257, 509,
584, 585 ; his policy of political reform,
587 sqq.
Ghenab, the, 283, 284, 290
Ghicago Gonference of Religions, the, 55 1
Chidambaram Pillai, 553
Ghief Gourts, 278, 381, 443
China, first war with, 150; second war
with, 150; opium trade with, 316, 326;
its relations with Tibet, 427, 430;
British campaign in North, 480
Chingleput, 44, 46
Chinhat, 186
Chins, the, 439, 446, 447
Chinsura, 20, 132
Ghirol, Sir Valentine, 377
Ghitpavan Brahmans, 549, 550, 554, 558
Ghitral, 402, 426, 463, 464, 467, 471
Chittagong, 23, 25, 252
Ghota Nagpur, 21, 35, 576
Ghuars, the, 35
Chuhar caste, the, 343
Chumbi Valley, the, 428
Chungi, 536
Church Missionary Society, the, 106, 123
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 2 1 5
Circle headman, the, 442
Cis-Satlej Sikh states, the, 76, 177, 192
Civic duties, the teaching of, 347
Civil Courts Act, the, 389
Civil Procedure Code, the, 18, 276, 380,
381, 384-7
Glapham Sect, the, 102, 123
Clarendon, Lord, 409
Clarke, Sir George, see Sydenham, Lord
Clarke, Lieutenant Melville, 1 76
Gleghorn, Dr, 364
Clerk, Sir George, 71, 115
Clive, Robert, Lord, 23, 146, 153-7, 163
Close, Colonel Barry, 164
Coalfields, 251
Cobden, Richard, 223
Cocanada, 270
Cochin-China, 437
Cochineal, 271
Code Penal, the, 387
Goimbatore, 44, 52, 272
Coinage, 62, 328; in Mysore, 502
Colebrooke, H. T., 96, 99, 132, 136, 389,
390, 393
Coleroon, the, 51
Collector, the, see District officer
College of Fort William, 99
Colville, Sir James, 524
Colvin, Colonel, 85
Golvin, John Russell, 177, 178, 180
Commander-in-chief, the, 229, 231
Commissioner, the, in Bengal, 24 sqq.y 245,
246; in Bombay, 61, 261, 262; in the
United Provinces, 78
Committee of Circuit, the, 127
Common Law, 5, 382, 387
Common Law Procedure Act, the, 385
Conmionwealth of India, draft Act, 589, 590
Communal representation, under the Act of
1 909, 564 sqq. ; under the Act of 1 9 1 9, 600
Conolly, H. V., 38
Conran, Colonel, 164
Conservancy, board at Bombay, 524; com-
mittee at Lucknow, 532
Constantinople, 577
Continental Customs and Excise, at Bom-
bay, 62, 63
Contract, law of, 386-8
Cooke, Captain, 433
Cooper, Mr, 433
Cooper, Frederick, 194
Go-operative credit, 265, 275, 290, 291,
309* 312
Cooper's Hill College, 365, 364, 373
Goorg, 38, 41, 238, 381, 501
Coote, Sir Eyre, 154, 157
Gornwallis, Lord, 22, 23, 29, 74, 76, 79,
128, 133, 158, 382
Coromandel, the, 150
Corrie, Bishop, 126
Cotton, Sir Arthur, 51
Cotton, Sir Henry, 539
Cotton, Brigadier Sydney, 191
Cotton, duties on, 216, 232,-266,-3i7, 322,
325, 333; Bourbon, 271
Council bills, 328, 329
Council of India, the, constitution of, 206-
9, 211, 212, 214, 216, 217, 601, 602; its
relations with the secretary of state, 210-
13, 215, 220, 221, 602; its relations with
the cabinet, 211; Indian members of,
217-19, 565, 601, 602; Montagu's pro-
posals regarding, 218, 219, 602 ; its
abolition proposed, 540
Council of Regency at Lahore, 90
Council of State, the, 599
Councillors of the Empress, the, 508
Councils Act, 1861, 228 sqq.
Court of Quarter Sessions, the, 58
Court of Wards, the, 41
Covenanted Civil Service, the, selected by
competition, 2, 9, 10, 16, 19, 358-60, 365,
366, 539 ; its monopoly of high employ-
ment, 10, 67, 77, 359, 367, 368; College
of Fort William for, 99, 122 ; simultane-
ous examinations for, 216, 366, 368, 370,
37^ 539-41; organisation of, yjl sqq.;
loses popularity, 375, 376; its services in
1914,377,378; rules for admission to, 603
41-2
644
INDEX
Craddock, Sir Reginald, 441, 553
Graigie, Captain, 176
Cranborne, Lord, see Salisbury, Lord
Cranbrook, Lord, 418, 419, 421
Crawford, Arthur, 525
Crewe, Lord, 218, 220-2, 376, 580, 588,
601, 602
Crimean War, the, 172, 404, 407, 409, 577
Criminal Intelligence Department, the, 373
Criminal Procedure Code, the, 18, 270,
276, 380, 384-7
Croft's Review, 343
Cromer, Lord, 167, 170, 215, 217, 570, 574
Cross, Lord, 543
Crosthwaite, Sir Charles, 369, 439, 441, 443
Crown, the, establishment of governnient
in the name of, 208 sqq., 267 ; its relations
with India, 219, 225
Cumbum, 164
Currency, 320, 321 ; reform of, 322-4, 328,
329 ; during the war, 330-2, 484
Curtis, Mr L., 591, 592
Curzon, Lord, 217, 219, 221, 231, 244, 362,
372, 403> 545. 554. 560, 567. 5^9 ; rela-
tions with his council, 232 ; relations
with provincial governments, 243 ; parti-
tion of Bengal, 252, 55 1 ; his famine policy,
304, 306-9, 311; his educational policy,
349 ^Q^'l his police reforms, 372, 373 ; his
pubhc works reforms, 373, 374; reduces
correspondence, 374; his administrative
reforms, 375 ; his foreign policy, 423, 427,
429 ; his frontier policy, 466 sqq.; his rela-
tions with the Indian states, 494, 504,
505
Customs duties, see Inland customs and Sea
customs
Cutch, 73, 130; Gulf of, 147, 149, 152
Cuttack, 298
Dacca, 20, 24, 252, 552, 575, 578
Dacoity, in Bengal, 32, 34, 35, 251-3, 341,
557; in the United Provinces, 79; in the
Panjab, 92; families guilty of, sold as
slaves, 127; in Burma, 439, 443, 445, 446
Dadabhai Naoroji, 554
Dakshina allowances, 107
Dalai Lama, the, 427, 477
Dalhousie, Lord, 18, 19, 22, 28, 32, 68, 90,
94, 116, 117, 119, 125, 167-72, 175, 183,
190,201, 204, 205,233, 234, 264, 337, 364,
404, 406, 417, 432, 439, 444, 468, 491
Dalwal, 354
Daly, Sir Henry D., 501
Dane, Sir Louis, 429
Danes, the, cede their Indian possessions,
20 ; prohibit sati, 1 32 ; promote missions,
341
Dargai, 467
Darjeeling, 20, 23
Daroga of police, the, 26, 56, 70, 71, 79, 139
Darwaz, 426
Darwesh Khel Waziris, the, 462
Datta Khel, 465
Davidson, Major, 202
Davis, Colonel, 164
Dawaris, the, 465
Dawezai Mohmands, the, 463
Daya Bhaga, the, 389, 391
Dayanand Saraswati, 539
Deane, Lieutenant-Colonel H. A., 469
Debendranath Tagore, 538
Deccan, the Bombay, 65-8, 71
Deccan Agriculturists Relief Act, the, 260
Decentralisation, financial, 319^99., 326
Decentralisation Commission, the, 241,
242, 292, 522, 572, 580, 588
Defence of India Act, the, 254, 485, 583-5
De Grey and Ripon, Lord, see Ripon, Lord
Dehra Dun, 420
Delafosse, H. G., 184
Delhi, 8, 84, 530, 577, 578, 586, 594; terri-
tory, 76, 87, 88; college at, iii; muti-
neers at, 172, 175-8, 180, 182, 183, 189-
96, 198, 205; transfer of capital to, 219,
240, 576; durbars at, 219, 575, 576;
population of, 238; war conference at,
486
Deputy-collector, the, in Bengal, 24, 25; in
Madras, 42
Deputy-conMnissioner, the, see District
officer
Dera Ghazi Khan, 451, 453
Dera Ismail Khan, 451, 460, 467-9, 475
Derajat, the, 451, 454, 455, 460, 469
Derby, Lord, 208, 2 1 1
Desais, the, 60
Devi, 33
Dhananjaya Bhanj, 39
Dharwar, 59, 66, 67, 267
Dhulia, 66
Digby,John, 104
Dinapur, 35, 180, 181, 188
Dindigul, 44, 164
Dinkar Rao, Sir, 1 79, 1 80, 499
Dir, 463, 467, 471, 473
Disraeli, Benjamin, Lord Beaconsfield, 208,
219. 223, 412, 418, 421, 424
District administration, in Bengal, 23 sqq.;
in Madras, ^2 sqq.; in Bombay, 60 sqq.,
255 ; in the Panjab, 90 sqq.
District boards, 274; their educational
duties, 347, 348; see also Rural boards
District officer, the, his position in Bengal,
24 sqq., 77, 24.5 sqq.; in Madras, 42, 272,
273; his control of police, 56, 63, 72; in
Bombay, 6isqq., 261 sqq., 264; inSind, 73;
in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces,
77; his duties regarding irrigation, 285;
in the United Provinces, 292, 293; in
Burma, 442
District Police Act (Bombay), 72
Divorce in Burma, 440
Dockyards, transferred from Surat to
Bombay, 145
Doctrine of lapse, the, 493
Domandi, 461
Dombkis, the, 448
INDEX
645
Dominicetti, Lieutenant, 149
Donoughmore, Lord, 592
Dorjieff, 427
Dost Muhammad, 190, 404-6, 41 1, 421
Dragon, the, 144
Duff, Alexander, 109, no, 114, 118, 131
Dufferin, Lord, 243, 366, 414, 425, 507,
541-3, 561, 563-7, 569
Duke, Sir WilHam, 591
Dumas, Benoit, 154
Dum-Dum, 173, 174
Duncan, Colonel, 433
Duncan, Jonathan, 96, 129, 146
Dundas, Sir David, 398
Dundas, Henry, Lord Melville, i
Dupleix, Joseph, 153, 154
Durand, Sir Henry, 201
Durand, Sir Mortimer, 428, 457, 462, 507
Durand Line, the, 457, 458, 462, 464, 468,
475
Dutch, the, cede their possessions in India,
20; prohibit sati, 132
Dyarchy, ^^isqq.
Easements, 505
East, Sir Hyde, 104
East Africa, campaign in, 479, 480
East India Company College, at Hailey-
bury, 357, 358
East India Company, loses trade monopoly,
2; loses trade rights, 3; expected end of,
4; its patronage, 4, 16; its relations with
the Board of Control, 12-16; its relations
with the Indian governments, 13, 14;
changes in 1 853, 1 6 sqq. ; displaced by
the crown, 15, 16, 205-8, 2 1 2 ; its attitude
to missions, 98, 99
East India House, 96
East Indians, 161
Eastern Bengal, 21, 245, 247, 576; com-
munications in, 31, 32, 251 ; formation of
province of, 252, 253; political agitation
and crime in, 551, 552, 559, 578
Eastern Jumna Canal, the, 84
Ecclesiastical establishment, 74, 124
Eden, Sir Ashley, 441
Educational policy, 2, 11, 169, 242, 292,
326, 335^9^-; in Bengal, 36, 95^?^., 346-
8, 351; in Bombay, 68, 107, 108, 117,
264, 265; in Madras, 108, 109, 117; in
the North- Western Provinces, 1 16-18;
universities, 118, 119, 336^99.; service,
336, 348; cost of, 341, 353; primary, 342,
343> 346, 347» 349, 350, 353; the Hunter
Commission on, 346-8; Curzon's views
on, 349-5 1 ; department of the Govern-
ment of India, 353; in Burma, 444, 445;
village, 513
Edward VII, King, 219, 570
Edwardes, Sir Herbert, 90, 190, 191, 193,
194, 404
Egypt, 149, 479, 480, 542, 544, 570, 574
Elephanta island, 58
Elgin, James, eighth Earl, 405, 493
Elgin, Victor Alexander, ninth Earl, 232 ;
frontier policy of, 461
Ellenborough, Lord, recalled, 13, 14;
favours crown government, 15, 208
Elphinstonei the, 150
Elphinstone, J. R., 134
Elphinstone, Lord, 69, 117, 200, 201
Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 61, 64, 65, 67,
71, 107, 130, 133, 228, 374, 513, 548
Elphinstone College, Bombay, 108, 337
Emden, the, 270
Emigration, Indian, 581, 582
Enfield rifle, the, 1 73
Engineering colleges, 117, 337, 363, 373
Engineers, the East India Company's, 395 ;
the corps of, 402
English studies, progress in, 340, 34 1 , 348, 349
Erie, Lord Chief Justice, 385
Erskine, H. N. B., 131
Ethersay, Commodore, 150
Euphrates, the, 150
Eurasians, 161, 341, 358
Europe, visits of Indian princes to, 504, 506
European infantry, recruitment of, 395
Europeans, education of, 341
Evangelical movement, the, 97, 123
Evidence Act, the, 386
Ewer, Walter, 137-9, ^43
Exchange, the rupee, 320-3, 327, 329;
compensation allowance, 371
Excise, in Madras, 54; in Bombay, 62, 63,
266; in the United Provinces, 86, 287;
in the Panjab, 288; policy, 288; revenue
from, 317, 320, 327, 333; in Burma, 442
Executive councils, proposed abolition of, 4;
alterations in the governor-general's, 4,
17; appointment of, 17, 214; pay of,
reduced, 1 9 ; Canning's proposals regard-
ing, 22& sqq.\ Indian members of, 231,
238, 239, 257, 561, 565, 569-71, 579, 580;
at Madras, 41
Explosives, possession of, 562
Eyre, Major Vincent, 181
Faizabad, 184, 203
Famine, in 1769-70, 23, 296; in the
United Provinces, 84, 85, 285, 297, 309-
11; in Orissa, 252, 267, 298, 299; in
1 876-8, 264, 267, <iOOsqq. ; in Madras, 267,
268; in the Panjab, 285; in the Central
Provinces, 285 ; general policy regarding,
294 j^^.; in 1837, 297; the Strachey
Commission on, 301-3; insurance, 303,
304, 321; codes, 304; their working,
304 sqq.; in 1896-7, 306; the Lyall Com-
mission on, 306, 307; in 1900, 307, 308;
charitable relief, 308 ; MacDonnell Com-
mission on, 308-10; relief in villages, 515,
516
Faridpur district, 250, 251
Fatehgarh, 198, 199, 203
Fawcett, Henry, 213
Female education, lack of, loi, 113; mis-
sion schools for, 1 16; in the Panjab, 116;
646
INDEX
Female education {continiud)
Bethune's efforts to promote, 116; to be
supp>orted, 118; backwardness of, 340,
345, 350
Female infanticide, 123; in Madras, 40; in
the Panjab, 93; in the Indian states, 131 ;
suppression of, 129 sqq.
Female suffrage, 600
Ferry, Jules, 437
Ferry committees, 516, 517
Fever Hospital and Municipal Improve-
ment Committee at Calcutta, 524
Finance, Council of India's functions, 209-
II, 213, 218, 320; member, 229, 240;
control of provincial, 240, 241, 291, 314;
policy, 314^^7.; decentralisation of, 319,
320, 5 1 7 ; in war-time, 330-3, 484 ; budget
discussions, 572 ; imder dyarchy, 596, 597
Finance department, the, 363
Firoz Shah, 84
Fitzpatrick, Sir Dennis, 369
Flags flown by the Bombay and Indian
marines, 148, 149, 151
Foreign Jurisdiction Act, the, 380
Foreign policy, control of, 14, 15, 209, 210,
229
Forests, 242, 262, 264, 272, 273, 286, 287,
295; revenue from, 320, 327; depart-
ment, 364; in Burma, 444
Forsyth, Sir Douglas, 434
Fort St David, 1 54, 1 55
Fort St George, see Madras
Fort Victoria, 58
Fort William, College of, 99, 122, 357, 358;
see also Calcutta
Fowler, Sir Henry, 232, 233, 324, 371
Fox, Charles James, i, 16
France, Indian troops in, 479, 480, 483
Franchise, under the Act of 1909, 571;
under the Act of 191 9, 595, 600, 603
Francis, Sir Philip, i
Franciscan missionaries, 354
Franks, General, 199
Fraser, Sir Andrew, 372, 552, 557
Freedom of Religion Act, the, 394
French, the, prohibit sati, 132; their rela-
tions with Thibaw, 437, 438; local self-
government under, 51 1
Frere, Sir Bartle, 192, 226-8, 232, 234, 257,
414, 418, 452, 468
Frontier Crimes Regulation, the, 471
Fryer, Sir Frederick, 441
Fulta, 20
Fytche, General, 441
Gaekwar, the, 59, 60 ; Malhar Rao deposed,
499> 500; -f** ^1^0 Baroda
Gait, Sir E. A., 594
Gallipoli, 480
Gandammak, Treaty of, 419, 456
Gandhi, Mr M. K., 581
Gangadhar, Pandit, 105
Ganges, the, 34, 78, 169, 18 1-4, 188, 189,
198, 297, 341
Ganjam, 39, 40, 268, 299
Gar, 471
Garden Reach, 1 74
Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 552
Gaya district, 134
General List, the, 396
General Staff, the, 221
George V, King, 219, 575
Germany, demonetises silver, 320; treaty
with Russia, 423 ; intrigues in India, 477,
584
Germany, war with, 231, 270, 311,476 sqq.,
509; its effect on Indian finance, 330-2;
its effect on the services, 377, 378; army
services during, 401; effect on the fron-
tier, 475
Ghadr movement, the, 485, 579, 582-4
Ghat Light Infantry, the, 71
Ghazni, 457, 459, 460
Gheria, 58, 144, 146
Gibson, Dr, 364
Giers, Count de, 423, 424
Gilgit, 463, 464, 467
Gillespie, Colonel, 163
Girasias, the, 60
Giridih, 251
Girishk, 459
Gladstone, W. E., 210, 41 1, 412, 421-5, 539,
545
Glenelg, Lord, see Grant, Charles
Godavari district, 41, 267-9
Godavari river, 51
Gokhale, G. K., 377, 554-8, 566, 574, 582
Gk)ld currency, 320, 330, 332; exchange
standard, 322-5, 328, 329, 334; imports,
332
Gold Standard Reserve, the, 324, 325, 329,
330, 333
Goodeve, Dr H. H., 344
Gooty, 164
Gordon, General, 147
Gordon, General Charles, 424
Gortchakoff, Prince, 408, 409
Gough, Sir Charles, 464
Government of India, the, powers of, 4, 9;
legislative authority of, 1833, 6; control
of foreign policy by, 14, 15; relations
with home government of, 211, 215, 217,
220, 222, 241, 244; relations with pro-
vincial governments of, 240 sqq., 319 sqq.,
326; relations with the high courts, 380
Gk)vernment of India Act, 1858, 20^ sqq.,
226, 240, 492
Government of India Act Amendment Act,
1869, 214
Government of India Bill, 1 9 1 9, 223, 587 sqq.
Governor-general, powers and duties of,
3, 17, 20, 226 sqq., 235, 236; legislative
veto of, 5, 17; as governor of Bengal, 9;
mode of appointing, 12, 13, 210; position
of, on change of ministry, 13; recalled by
the East India Company, 13; private
correspondence of, with the secretary of
state, 214, 220, 221
INDEX
647
Governors, mode of appointing, 210;
powers, etc. of, 239, 243, 258
Graham, Sir James, 16
Grand Anikat, the, 51
Grand Trunk Road, the, 32, 93, 190, 202,
203
Grandpre, — , 523
Grant, Sir A., 339
Grant, Charles, his views on education and
missions, 97-9, 102, 113, 119, 123, 348
Grant, Charles, Lord Glenelg, 3, 9, 12,
125
Grant, Sir Hope, 196
Grant, Sir John Peter, 246
Grantham, Admiral Sir Thomas, 162
Granville, Lord, 226, 413, 421, 423-5
Greece, 490, 578
Green, Sir Henry, 414, 458
Greenwich Hospital, 146
Grenville, Lord, i, 2, 9, 10, 16
Grey, Sir Charles, 379
Griffin, Sir Lepel, 421
Grigg, H. B., 348
Grose, J. H., 145
Guardians and Wards Act, the, 386
Gubbins, Martin, 185, 186
Guides, the corps of, 165, 192, 194
Gujarat, 59, 60, 63-8, 130, 132, 265, 307,
3455 389, 499; primitive tribes in, 256
Gujarat Cooly Corps, the, 71
Gujars, the, 179
Gulab Singh, 495, 496
Gulran, 425
Gumal Pass and river, 461, 467, 471
Gumatti, 458
Gumsur, troubles in, 39
Gumti, the, 184, 189, 196, 197, 199
Gun-running, see Arms traffic
Guntur, 44, 267, 270
Gurchanis, the, 454
Gurdaspur, 194
Gurkhas, war with, 75; recruitment of, 165,
396, 399> 40 1 » 402, 451 ; military services
of, 174, 178, 190, 194, 195, 199, 204
Gurus, loi, 131
Gwalior, 203, 504
Gwalior contingent, the, 179, 188, 197, 202
Gyangtse, 427
Haas, — , 437, 438
Habib-ullah, 428-30, 473, 475, 485
Haileybury, East India Company's college
at, 9^ 357> 358
Hala Mountains, the, 448
Halhed, N., 389, 390
Halifax, Lord, see Wood, Sir Charles
Halimzai Mohmands, the, 463
Halliday, Sir F. J., 22, 27, 28, 180, 181,
246
Halqabandi school system, the, 116, 117
Hamilton, Lord George, 215, 216, 222
Hamilton, Sir Robert, 201, 202
Hamirpur, 77
Hangu, 461
Hardinge, Charles, Lord, 403, 477, 509,
578, 5795 582, 587
Hardinge, Henry, Lord, 1 1 5
Hardy, Captain, 149
Hare, David, his educational activity, 99,
104, no, 116, 119
Hari-rud, the, 423
Hari Singh, 450
Harrison, Major, 454
Hartington, Lord, 215, 216, 421, 422,
496
Hasted, Captain, 267
Hastings, Marquess, 31, 103, 104, 170,
514
Hastings, Warren, 22, 34, 95, 96, in, 127,
132, 3895 390
Hathras, 78
Havelock, Sir Arthur, 394
Havelock, General Sir Henry, 183, 187-90,
190-9, 205
Havelock, Henry (the younger), 200, 203
Hayes, Commodore, 147, 149
Hazara, 450, 451, 460, 462, 468, 469
Hazara Pioneers, the, 402
Hazrat Ganj, at Lucknow, 199
Hearsey, General, 174, 175
Heber, Reginald, 105, io6
Hemp, 289
Herat, 404, 405, 415, 420, 423, 459
Herschell, Lord, 323
Hewett, Sir John, 309, 553, 579, 580
Hewitt, General, 176, 177
Hewlett, Dr, 526
Heytesbury, Lord, 13
Hidaya, the, 383
High Commissioner for India, the, 602
High Courts of judicature, 247, 259, 270,
2775.380, 384, 385, 387, 389, 393; their
relations with the government, 380
Himalayas, the, 341
Hindu College, Calcutta, 104, 141
Hindu Gains of Learning Bill, 394
Hindu Kush, the, 464
Hindu law, 66, 80, 95, 96, 125, 132, 135,
3835 389-94
Hindu-Muslim relations, 269, 488, 541,
544. 550-2, 566, 570, 573, 576, 577, 580,
587, 600
Hindu Patriot, the, 369
Hindu Rao's House, 193, 195
Hindu Widow Remarriage Act, the, 394
Hindu Wills Act, the, 394
Hindustani, 161
Hissar, 84, 285, 286
Hluttaw, the, 435, 436, 438, 440
Hobart, Lord, i
Hobart, Lord, 534
Hobhouse, Sir John Cam, 126, 403
Hobhouse, Lord, 386
Hodeida, 150
Hodson, Major W. S. R., 196
Hog island, 58
Hogg, Sir James, 223
Hogg, Sir Stewart, 525
648
INDEX
Holkar, 201, 500, 501; Jasvant Rao, 296
Holland, Sir Thomas, 483
Home charges, the, 321
Home Government, under the Act of 1833,
12 sqq.; its legislative control, 18, 236;
its functions, 207, 2 1 1 , 2 1 4, 2 1 5, 2 1 7, 222,
241, 243, 244, 314, 403, 579, 601
Home Rule Bill for India, 544
Home Rule Party, 270, 487, 584
Honorary magistrates, 246
Hospital Board, the, 57
Houghton, Lord, 360
House of Commons, see Parliament
House of Lords, see Parliament
Hughes, Sir Edward, 147
Hughli, the, 32
Hughli district, 34, 1 38
Human sacrifice, among the Khonds, 40;
at Sagor Island, 128, 129, 139; in Burma,
433, 446
Humayun, the tomb of, 196
Hume, A. O., 549
Hunter, the, 144
Hunter Education Commission, the, 346-8
Hunza, the Thum of, 461
Hunza campaign, the, 507
Hyder Ali, 122, 147, 156
Hyderabad (Deccan), 163; during the
Mutiny, 202; famine at, 300, 307; Con-
tingent, 165, 397, 400
Hyderabad (Sind), 73, 150
Ibbetson, Sir Denzil, 553
IgnatiefF, Count, 407
Ilbert, Sir Courtney, 387
Ilbert Bill, the, 216, 387, 539, 548
Imperial Institute, the, 554
Imperial Service Troops, 401, 477
Inam tenures, in Madras, 50, 55; in Bom-
bay, 70, 167, 201, 257
Inchbird, Captain, 146
Income Tax, the, 53, 317, 322, 327, 333
India Act, the, i , 58, 95
India House, 553, 554
India Office, the, 206 sqq.; its independence
of parliament, 222-5; charges, 602; see
also Home Government
Indian Army, see Army
Indian Army Service Corps, the, 402
Indian Association, the, 539
Indian Christians, 125
Indian Civil Service, see Covenanted Civil
Service
Indian Civil Service Act, 1861, the, 358,
359
Indian Councils Bills, 189 1-2, 544, 545
Indian Educational Service, the, 348
Indian Forest Act, the, 286, 364
Indian High Courts Act, the, 380
Indian Majority Act, the, 394
Indian Marine Service Act, the, 151
Indian Medical Department, 482
Indian Medical Service, the, 57, 74, 365,
376, 377, 482
Indian Munitions Board, the, 483
Indian National Congress, the, 539, 540,
543-9, 554, 555, 560-2, 565, 573, 574,
576, 581, 582, 585-8, 590, 591
Indian Navy, the, 148, 149
IndianNewspapers (Incitement toOfFenccs)
Act, the, 554, 559, 574, 584, 585
Indian Police Service, the, 372
Indian Sociologist, the, 554
Indian states, the minor, under the Bombay
Presidency, 255, 256, 259; jurisdiction of
high courts in, 380; forces of, 400, 401,
497, 502, 507 ; services of, in the war with
Germany, 477; relations of, with the
Government of India, 489 sqq. ; council
of princes, 561, 563, 565
Indianisation, in the army, 401 ; in the civil
services, 486, 588
Indians, the state employment of, 10, 17,
19, 26, 42, 43, 67, 74, 78, III, 115, 118,
170, 231, 238, 358-63, 365-71, 373, 376,
377,. 561, 570; attitude towards the
British government of, 169-71, 179; seek
education overseas, 344, 354; in Burma,
447; in the colonies, 581, 582
Indigo planters, 246, 341
Indo-Britons, 161
Indo-China, 437, 440
Indore, 201
Indus, the, 89, 150, 152, 191, 341, 451,
467-9; defence of, 457, 458
Inglis, Brigadier, 186, 187
Inland Custom dues, 53
Inns of Court, the, 354
Inspector-general of civil estimates, the, 5 1
Inspector-general of police, the, 72, 245
Inspector-general of prisons, the, 56, 73
Iraq, see Mesopotamia
Irawadi, the, 151, 341, 434, 444, 446
Irish National League, the, 540
Irish rebellion, the, 584
Irrigation, in Madras, 5 1 ; in the United
Provinces, 84, 85, 283; in the Panjab, 93,
279, 283, 284; commission on, 284;
finance of, 319, 325-7; in Burma, 444
Isa Khel, the, 469
Isazai, the, 461
Islington, Lord, 220, 377
Iswar Chunder Vidyasagar, Pandit, 538
Italy, 577
Ives, E., 145
Jabwa, the raja of, 498
Jack, J. C, 250, 251
Jacob, General John, 284, 414, 449, 458
Jacob, Sir G. Le Grand, 131, 201
Jacobabad, the Treaty of, 455
Jadeja, see Jharija
Jagannadha, 389
Jagannath, 298
Jagirs under Ranjit Singh, 88
Jails, in Madras, 56; in Bombay, 73, 262;
general, 365
Jaipalguri, 23
INDEX
649
Jaipur, 130, 482, 498, 499
Jakat, the, 62
Jalalabad, 430
Jalandhar Doab, the, 75, 76, 87
Jalandhar town, 191
Jalna, 164
James, Commodore, 146
James, Lord Justice, 386
Jamrud, 456, 467
Jamshedji Bomanji, 146
Jandol, 463
Jang Bahadur, 1 99
Janjiri, 145, 506
Janmis, the, 49
Japan, war with Russia, 551, 552
Jasti patti, 62
Jats, the, 130, 179, 401
Jaunpur district, 129
Java, 149
Jehlam, the, 152, 194, 284
Jenkins, Sir R., 94
Jervis, Sir John, 384
Jesuit schools, 1 1 7
Jhansi, 76, 168; during the Mutiny, 201,
202, 204, 205
Jharija Rajputs, the, 130
Jherria, 251
Jhind, the raja of, 192, 204
Jirga, the, 471, 472
Jodhpur, 130, 477, 482
Joint family, the, 390 sqq.
Joint-magistrate, the, 25
Jones, Captain, 150
Jones, Sir William, 96, 98, 127, 132, 389,
390
Jowaki peninsula, the, 458
Jubbalpore, 532
Judge-magistrate, the, 24
Judicature, need of reforming, 3, 5; em-
ployment of Indians in, 26, 43, 44, 67
Judicature Act, the, 387
Jugantar, the, 554
Jumna, the, 75, 78, 84, 85, 87, 178, 182,
283, 297
Jungle Conservancy Department, the, 272
Jungle Mahals, the, 138
Jury, trial by, 44, 64, 66, 385
Justice, see Law courts
Justices of the peace, 67, 523 sqq.
Jute mills, 251
Kabul, 404-6, 410, 413, 415-17J 419-22,
428, 430, 436, 457, 459, 460, 462, 463,
583
Kabul river, the, 471
Kachhi hills, the, 448, 449
Kachhi plain, the, 448, 449
Kachins, the, 439, 446
Kaimur hills, the, 200
Kaira district, 59, 60, 64
Kaira town, 63
KaisarBagh, the, at Lucknow, 189, 197, 199
Kalat, the khan of, 414, 448, 453-6, 498,
499
Kalat-i-Ghilzai, 165, 459
Kali, 33
Kalpi, 202
Kalugumalai, 269
Kamali Mohmands, the, 463
Kamavisdar, the, 60, 61, 67, 70
Kandahar, 404, 405, 414, 415, 418, 420,
422, 457, 459
Kangra, 190
Kanomdars, the, 49, 50
Kanungos, the, 29, 305
Karachi, port trust at, 263 ; customs at, 266
Karachi district, 73, 260, 468
Karanja island, 58
Kardars, the, 88
Karenni, 434
Karens, the, 445, 446
Karnal, 177
Kashmir, 191, 426, 464; British relations
with, 495, 496; state troops, 195, 402, 481
Kasijora case, the, 380
Kasmore, 448
Kathiawar, 60, 130, 147, 149, 346, 553;
states in, 255; famine in, 307
Kattubadi peons, 50
Kaufmann, General, 408, 412, 413, 416,
^417,419
Kavalgars, the, 55, 56
Kaveri, the, 51, 295
Kaye, Sir John, 14, 33, 34, 117, 119
Kayesthas, the, 95, 100
Keigwin's rebellion, 144, 162
Kelly, Colonel, 463
Ken Canal, the, 284
Kenery island, 144
Kengtung, 439
Kennedy, General, 301
Kennedy, Mrs and Miss, 552
Kesari, the, 550, 551, 555
Keshub Chundra Sen, 538
Keynes, Mr J. M., 334
Khalsa land, 88
Khamba Jong, 427
Khan Bahadur Khan, 1 78, 203
Khanderi island, 144
Khandesh, 59, 61, 62, 65, 66, 261
Khandesh Bhil Corps, the, 71
Khar Movable Column, the, 467
Khartum, 424
Khasanne, 472
Khetri caste, the, 135
Khilafat agitation, the, 577, 583
Khiva, 404, 407-9, 413, 458
Khoja community, the, 392
Khokand, 407, 408
Khonds, the, 35, 39, 40, 268
Khost, 458, 474
Khudadad Khan, 454
Khuddam-i-Kaaba, the, 577
Khulla vesh, 473
Khwaja Amran Range, the, 459
Khyber Pass, the, 414, 418, 419, 458, 459,
462, 465-8; political agent for, 451;
tribes in, 456
650
INDEX
Khyber Rifles, the, 467
Kila Drosh, 467
Killpatrick, Major James, 155
Kimberley, Lord, 216, 347, 368, 544
King's Bench, Court of, 64
King's regiments in India, 154, 155, 158,
174
Kingsford, Mr, 552
Kinwunmingyi, the, 433 sqq.
Kishengarh, 477
Kistna, the, 51
Kitchener, Lord, 231, 507
Kohat, 451, 452, 454, 458, 461, 462, 467,
468
Kolaba, 59
Kolhapur, 59, 201
Konkan, the, 33, 65-8, 146, 296
Konkanasth Brahmans, 549
Koomashdars, 67
Kopal, 267
Koran, the, 100, 122
Koti, 71
Kotwal, the, 79, 529, 533, 535
Krishnavarma, Shyamaji, 553, 554, 579
KuHn Brahmans, 104, 112
Kulkarni, the, 62, 261
Kumarof, General, 425
Kunch, 202
Kundapur, 147
Kunwar Singh, 181, 200, 204
Kurdistan, 480
Kurmi caste, the, 343
Kurnool, annexation of, 38, 41
Kurram Militia, the, 467
Kurram Pass and district, 414, 419, 420,
45 1 > 458, 459, 461, 466-8, 470, 471
Kushalgarh, 467
Kushk, 428
Kut-el-Amara, 220
Laccadive Islands, the, 152, 268
Lahore, 76, 89, 93, 190, 192, 194, 530, 553,
573, 574» 579» 583^ 586; college at, 348
Lahore division, the, 400
Lajpat Rai, Lala, 553, 554
Lalkaka, Dr, 554
Lally, Count, 155, 158
Lambardar, the, 514
Lambeth Palace, 124
Lamsdorff", Count, 428
Land Acquisition Act, the, 262
Land Purchase Bill, the, 544
Landi Kotal, 467
Land-revenue, system of the, in Madras,
44 sqq., 271 ; in Bombay, 60 sqq., 261 sqq.;
in Sind, 73; in the United Provinces,
80 sqq., 167, QjQsqq.; in the Panjab, 88,
90, 91 ; in the Central Provinces, 94, 280,
281; in Oudh, 94; its financial aspects,
315, 316, 320, 327, 333
Land-revenue jurisdiction, 381
Land-tenures, under the permanent settle-
ment, 44, 45; on the North-West Frontier,
472, 473
Lansdowne, Lord, 368, 369, 371, 427, 428,
543; his frontier policy, 461-3, 468
Lapse, Dalhousie's policy of, 168
Larka Kols, the, 35
Las Bela, 456
Lashio, 444, 446
Lashkar, 497
Latin Union, the, 320
Lavji Nasarvanji Wadia, 145
Law, codification of, 8, 18, 382 sqq.
Law, criminal, 79
Law colleges, 337
Law commission, established in 1833, 7,
383, 384, 387; re-established in 1853, ^^>
384; in 1 86 1, 385, 386
Law courts, their jurisdiction, 5; in Madras,
42-4, 270; in Bombay, 60 sqq., 72, 73,
259 sqq. ; in the United Provinces, 78,
277, 278; in the Panjab, 89, 92, 278; in
Bengal, 247; in the Central Provinces,
278; need of reform, 379; in Burma, 443,
444; see a/i^o Judicature
Law member, the, 7, 1 7, 229
Lawrence, Sir George, 180
Lawrence, Sir Henry, 170, 437; in the
Panjab, 90; in Oudh, 168, 177, 184-6
Lawrence, John, Lord, in the Panjab, 90,
93, 1 77, 404; views regarding the sepoys,
171; conduct during the Mutiny, 1 90-3,
196, 199, 200, 204; his foreign policy,
214, 406-9, 411, 414, 456-8; policy as
governor-general, 231, 232, 283, 299,
360
Lawrence, Stringer, 154, 155
Layard, Sir Henry, 235
Leckie, Lieutenant, 71
Leeke, Rear- Admiral, 150
Lee-Warner, Sir William, The Native States of
India, 489, 497, 501, 503, 507
Legal member, see Law member
Legal profession, development of, 247, 248,
443
Legislature, the need of amending, 3;
changes in 1833, 5-7; changes in 1853,
17, 18, 233, 234; in non-regulation dis-
tricts, 77, 235; Indian members of, 170,
235, 236; reforms in 1861, 234-6; gover-
nor-general's separate powers, 236; pro-
vincial, 236, 241 ; home control of, 237;
reforms in 1892, 237, 542, 560; reforms
in 1909, 238, 560^9^.; reforms in 191 9,
588 sqq.
Lhasa, 427, 428, 430
Licence Tax, the, 53, 317, 321, 322
Lieutenant-governors, pay of, 19; mode of
appointing, 210; provinces under, 239,
243
Limitation Act, the, 386
Literacy in Burma, 339, 340
Liverpool, Lord, 13
Lloyd, General, 180, 181
Local Fund Act, the, 274
Local Government Board, the, 537
Local list, the, 396
INDEX
651
Local Rates Bill, 519
Local self-government, in Bengal, 36, 37,
247, 520; in the United Provinces, 86,
87, 291, 292; in Madras, 273; relations
with education, 347, 348; in Burma, 447;
general, 511 sqq.
Lomakin, General, 413
London Missionary Society, the, 123
Lottery Funds, 523
Louisiana Code, the, 387
Low, Sir Robert, 463, 464
Lowarai, 464
Lowe, Robert, Lord Sherbrooke, 384
Lower Bari Doab Canal, the, 284
Lower Chenab Canal, the, 283
Lower Duncan Dock, the, 146
Lower Ganges Canal, the, 283
Lower Jehlam Canal, the, 284
Lower Old Bombay Dock, the, 145
Lucknow, during the Mutiny, 1 75, 1 84-90,
196-200, 203, 205; municipality, 532
Lucknow division, the, 400
Lucknow Pact, the, 590, 600
Ludhiana, 191
Ludhiana Sikhs, the, 182
Lumsden, Sir Peter, 423, 424
Lush, Lord Justice, 386
Lushington, C. M., 139
Lutheran missionaries, the, 98, 121
Lyall, Sir A., 216, 347, 548
Lyall, Sir James, 306
Lyallpur, 284; agricultural college at,
290
Lyons, Lord, 437
Lytton, Lord, passes cotton duties, 232; his
famine policy, 301 ; establishes the statu-
tory civil service, 361 ; his foreign policy,
412-22, 456; his frontier policy, 452, 455,
468; his durbar, 495, 508; his policy to-
wards the Indian states, 508 ; general, 539,
548, 577
Macaulay, — , 520
Macaulay, T. B., Lord, on the Act of 1833,
3, 4; on the Act of 1853, 14, 223; as law
member, 7, 8, 17, 57, 229, 383, 384, 387,
388 ; advocates competitive examinations,
10,16,19,358; his educational policy, 1 1 ,
111-15, 120, 350; on Hastings, 404
McClelland, — , 444
Macdonald, Mr Ramsay, 377
MacDonnell, Sir Anthony, Lord, 308-10,
568, 570
Macdowell, Lieutenant-General Hay, 164
Machi Bhawan, the, 185, 186
Mackenzie, Sir Alexander, 441
Mackenzie, Holt, 81
Macleod, Sir Donald, 90
MacMahon, Major, 433
Macpherson, Charters, 179
Mad Mullah, the, see Sadullah Khan
Madan Mohun Malaviya, Pandit, 378
Madangadh, 149
Madhava Rao, Sir, 500
Madras city, fort church at, 122; capture
of, 154; siege of, 155; corporation of, 273,
512, 523 J 524» 526, 528, 529; Theosophi-
cal Society at, 540; civil engineering
college at, 363 ; university of, 117-19, 336,
340; Bishop of, 124
Madras Fusiliers, the, 182, 183, 189, 190
Madras Parliament, the, 589
Madras Presidency, 38 sqq., 267 sqq.', extent
of, 41 ; government of, 41, 239, 243, 570;
judicature in, 42, 270; land-revenue and
tenures, 44 sqq. ; public works in, 51, 52 ;
education in, 108, 109, 117, 348; Danish
missionaries in, 121, 122; sati practised
in, 132, 136, 139, 142; army of, 153 sqq.,
172, 399, 400; during the Mutiny, 163,
164, 267; population of, 238; famine in,
267, 300, 301, 306; forests in, 272, 273,
364; finances of, 275; political tran-
quillity of, 369; recruitment in, 402;
rural boards in, 520; municipalities
in, 53 1 sqq. ; legislative council in, 546 ;
political agitation in, 553, 575
Madrasi sepoys, 399, 400
Madura, 44
Maharajpur, battle of, 497
Mahdi, the, 423
Mahe, 153, 154
Mahi Kantha, 60
Mahidpur, 398
Mahsuds, the, 454-6, 460, 462, 470, 471,
473, 475, 485
Mahua tree, the, 287
Maidan Jagis, the, 470
Maine, Sir Henry, 210, 213, 216, 224, 386
Maitland, Admiral, 150
Maiwand, 398, 422
Maizar, 465
Makran, the, 147, 466
Maktabs, the, 100, 338, 356
Malabar, 38, 44, 147, 268; land-revenue
and tenures in, 49, 50; tobacco in, 52;
forests in, 272; family system in, 392
Malacca, 152
Malakand, the, 451, 463-8
Malaon Regiment, the, 165
Malay translation of the Bible, 100
Malcolm, Sir John, 21, 63, 71, 108, 142,
159, 164, 396, 398, 548
Maldive Islands, the, 152
Malguzari settlement, the, 280
Malta, Indian troops sent to, 416
Malwa contingent, the, 201
Mamlatdar, the, 60, 61, 65, 67, 70, 71, 261,
262, 265
Manbhum, 35
Manchuria, 428
Mandalay, mission school at, 432; new
capital at, 433, 434, 437-9; judicial
commissioner at, 443 ; railway at, 444
Mandvi, 59
Mangal Pandy, 174, 175
Mangalore, 38, 147, 158
Mangalwar, 188
652
INDEX
Manipur, revolt in, 501
Mansion House Famine Fund, the, 267
Manu, laws of, 96, 138, 389
Maramat department, the, 51, 52
Marathas, the, third war with, 94 ; practise
sati, 132; as sepoys, 401; special repre-
sentation of, 600
Maravars, the, 269
Mardan, 191, 192
Margary, — , 434
Marine, the East India Company's, 144 sqq.
Marine Board, the, 148
Marine department, the, 1 5 1
Marine Survey, the, 146, 151, 152
Marks, Dr, 432, 437
Marris, the, 453, 485
Marshman, J., 99, 103
Maruchak, 425
Marumakattayam law, 392
Marwats, the, 470
Mastuj, 467
Mastung agreement, the, 455
Masulipatam, 44, 164, 267
Mathews, Commodore, 145
Maude, Sir Stanley, 481
Mauritius, 149, 479
Mayhew, Mr A., 355
Mayo, Lord, 18, 236, 237, 240, 291, 344,
345 J 517; tiis foreign pohcy, 410, 498
Mayo College, Ajmer, 346
Mayor's Court, Bombay, 58
Mazzini, G., 538, 552
Mecca, the Sharif of, 583
Medical colleges, 109, 117, 337, 344
Medical department, 242
Meerut, during the Mutiny, 175-8, 180,
182-4, 201, 204
Meerut division, 400
Megasthenes, 535
Mekran, see Makran
Melbourne, Lord, 13
Melmastia, 470
Melville, Sir P. M., 131
Merchant Shipping Act, the, 151
Meriah, 40
Merv, 423
Meshed, 424
Mesopotamia, campaign in, 479-81, 483
Mesopotamia Commission, the, 220, 221,
480, 481
Meston, Lord, 580
Metcalfe, Chzirles, Lord, 12, 109, 114, 141,
548
Metcalfe House, at Delhi, 193
Methodists, the, 123
Mewasis, the, 60, 261
Mewats, the, 130
Mhar, the, 261
Mhow, during the Mutiny, 201, 202
Mhow division, the, 400
Miani, 150
Mianmir, 190
Middle Old Bombay Dock, 145
Midleton, Lord, 218
Midnapur, 133, 552
Military Board, 51, 85
Military officers, recruitment of, 157, 158,
397, 482; establishment and quality of,
160; mutinies of, 162 sqq.; civil employ-
ment of, 371, 375, 397, 398, 442
Militia, at Bombay, 69; frontier, 467, 475
Mill, James, 96
Mindon, King, 432-5
Mines in Burma, 444
Mint, see Coinage
Mmto, first Lord, 34, 99, 100, 102, 123, 135,
136, 164, 253
Minto, Gilbert, fourth Earl of, relations of,
with Morley, 217, 232, 575; views on the
Council of India, 217, 218; relations
with his council, 232; reforms of, 238,
561 sqq., 587, 593; views on the lieuten-
ant-governors, 243; his foreign policy,
429, 430; his opium policy, 503; his
policy towards the Indian states, 508,
509; on political agitation, 553, 575
Mir Kasim, 155
Miranzai expeditions, 461
Mirasi right, 46
Missions, C. Grant proposes, 97, 98; at
Serampur, 98, 99, 341 ; Company's
policy regarding, 102, 123, 124; found
college and schools, 105, 106; Metcalfe
on, 109; rehgious education, 114, 116;
in Madras, 117; educational influence
of, 120; discouraged, 121; activity in
England, 123; attack sati pohcy, 136,
137; effects of circular on sepoys, 173;
promote female education, 345
Mitakshara, the, 389, 390
Mittankot, 453
Mocha, 149
Moghul empire, successions under the, 497
Mohatarfa, the, 52, 53
Mohmands, the, 462, 465, 471, 473, 475,
485
Mongols, the, 577
Montagu, E. S., 221, 223, 257, 487, 575;
proposals regarding the India Office,
218; visits India, 222; on the Indian
states, 509; pohcy of pohtical reform,
589 sqq.
Monteath, A. M., 339, 340
Montgomery, Sir Robert, 90, 190, 194, 203
Montresor, Colonel, 164
Moplahs, the, 38, 158, 268, 399
Moradabad, 204
Moreland, W. H., 127, 296
Morgan, General J. H., 217
Morley, John, Lord, 217, 224, 231, 232,
258, 241, 243, 244, 376, 403, 429, 430,
486, 508, 553, 554, 556, 557, f)6osqq.,
575» 576, 587, 589* 593
Moti Lai Nehru, Pandit, 569
Moulmein, recorder of, 381, 443; railway
to, 444
Muhammarah, 150
Muir, Sir William, 348
INDEX
653
Muir College, 348
Mukhtars, the, 247
Mullagori, 467
Multan, 150, 191, 192, 530
Municipalities, in the United Provinces, 86,
87? 292, 532, 535; in the Panjab, 93, 292,
530, 533, 535; in Bengal, 247, 532, 533,
535, 537; in Madras, 273, 274, 531, 533,
535> 537 J in the Central Provinces, 292,
532, 533; educational duties of, 347, 348;
general, 511, 512, 529^9^.; in Bombay,
530, 531, 533, 535; in Burma, 532, 533
Munro, Sir Hector, 163
Munro, Sir Thomas, 45, 47, 56, 71, 108,
159, 160, 161, 170, 395, 396, 397, 513,
548
Munsiff, the, in Bengal, 26, 247 ; in Madras,
43, 270; in Bombay, 64, 67, 72, 260
Murshidabad, 24
Muslim education, scheme for, 113; lack of
interest in, 1 1 7, 340 ; foundation of Ali-
garh, 344, 345; need of encouraging, 347;
unfairness of simultaneous examinations,
366, 369
Muslim law, 79, 80, 96, 127, 270, 383, 389,
392, 394
Muslim political action, attitude in 1914-
18,485; relations with Congress, 541, 582,
593, 600; special seats in the legislature
for, 564, 566, 570, 571; reversal of the
Bengal partition and, 576; the Khilafat
agitation, 577, 583; the League, 582;
conspiracies, 583, 584
Mutilation as a punishment, 498
Mutiny of Europeans and officers, 1 62 sqq.
Mutiny of sepoys, at Barrackpore, 13, 162;
at Vellore, 122, 123, 135, 140, 163; in
1857, 18, 119, iQQsqq.
Muttahdars, 269
Muttahs, 44
Muzaffarpur, 552, 556
Myingun, 436, 439
Myingundaing, 436
Myingyan, 444
Myitkyina, 444, 446
Mymensingh, 247
Mysore, famine in, 300 ; troops, 482 ; treaty
with, 489; rendition of, 501-3
Nabha, raja of, 192, 204
Nadiad, 260
Nagar, the Thum of, 461
Nagar Parkar district, 73
Nagari, 343
Nagpur, 75, 76, 94, 165, 168, 202, 239, 278,
532, 555; agricultural college at, 290
Nagpur district, 285
Najm-ud-din, the Adda Mullah, 465
Nana Sahib, 167, 168, 173; in the Mutiny,
183, 184, 187, 201, 203-5, 267
Nanawatai, 470
Napier, Sir Charles, 71, 172, 448, 449
Napier, Brigadier Robert, 90, 199
Narada, 389
Narasimha Reddi, 50
Narbada, the, 203
Nasik district, 59
Nasik town, 482
Nasirabad, 180
Nasr-ullah, 428, 429, 474
Natal, 581, 582
Naushahra, 191, 467
Naval Defence Squadron, 151
Naval Discipline Act, the, 151
Mazars, 62
Neill, Colonel, 182, 187-90
Nellore, 44
Nepal, 199, 203; war with, 103, 165; re-
cruitment in, 402; conduct in 1914, 477
Nesfield, J. C, 343
Nesselrode, Count, 404
New Zealand, 150
Nga Ya Nyun, 443, 444
Nicholas I, 404
Nicholson, A. P., Scraps of Paper, 489
Nicholson, John, 90, 170, 191, 192, 194,
195
Nicobar Islands, the, 238, 240
Nihilism, 552
Nimach, 180
Ningyan, 438
Nizam of Hyderabad, 39, 59, 62, 76, 164,
165, 202, 240, 400, 490, 491,495,497,
506
Nizamat adalat, the, on sati, 135-7, 139,
141
Nizam-ul-mulk, 463
Non-regulation districts, 22, 23, 38, 40, 76,
77, 87, 90, 261, 269, 276, 278, 361
Normal schools, 108, 339
North Kanara, 59, 257
Northbrook, Lord, relations of, with Lord
Salisbury, 214, 215; relations with coun-
cil, 232; his famine policy, 300; his
foreign pohcy, 361, 410-12, 415, 421;
policy towards the Indian states, 496,
499; general, 543, 544
Northern Circars, disturbances in, 39;
zamindaris in, 44, 268
North- West Frontier Province, 76, 214,
238-40, 300, 451, 467, 468, 473; re-
cruitment in, 402
North-Western Frontier (Sind), 73
North-Western Provinces, 20, 21, jG sqq.,
90, 167, 171, 176, 239, 278, 280, 299, 302,
361, 380, 548; education in, 116, 117,
339, 340, 343, 347; during the Mutiny,
178, 179; legislative council in, 236, 542,
546; tenant-right in, 281 ; police in, 474;
rural boards in, 520; municipalities in,
532 ; octroi duties, 535, 536
Nott, Commander, 150
Noya Serai, 134
Nuddea, Sanskrit college at, 99
Nuddea district, 138
Nushki, 467, 485
Nyaungok, 436
Nyaungyan, 436, 437, 439
654
INDEX
Observatory, the, 103
Octroi duties, 535, 536
O'Dwyer, Sir Michael, 469, 481
Official majority in the legislature, 18
Oil fields in Burma, 444
Omichand, his will, 393
Ongole, 267
Opium, administration, 21, 86, 289, 442;
trade in, 216; revenue, 316, 320, 326,
327; in the Indian states, 503
Orakzai, the, 461, 465, 467, 471
Orange Free State, 581
Ordinances of the governor-general, 236,
562
Orenburg, 495
Orenburg-Tashkent railway, 428
Orissa, 20, 21, 23, 25, 35, 252, 267, 576;
famine in, 298, 299, 518
Osborne, Lieutenant, 201
Osiander, the, 144
Oudh, 76, 94, 156, 159, 165, 171, 342, 361;
annexation of, 168, 169, 173, 174; during
the Mutiny, 177, 184^9^., 198-200,
203-5, 208; government of, 239; revenue
settlement in, 279, 280 j tenant-right in,
281 ; famine in, 300, 302; courts in, 381 ;
treaties with, 489, 497 ; title of king of, 495 ;
rural boards in, 520; municipalities, 532
Outram, Sir James, 71, 119, 182, 189, 190,
196, 197, 199, 200, 203
Oxus, the, 409, 410, 426
Pagan, King, 432
Pakhtunwali, the, 470
Palestine, 480
Pallamcottah, 164
Palmerston, Lord, 208
Palnad, 44
Pamirs, the, 426, 463, 464, 495
Panch Mahals, the, 59, 261
Panchayats, in Bengal, 28, 247, 254; in
Madras, 43, 275, 520; in Bombay, 61, 65;
on the Bombay border, 256; in the Pan-
jab, 89; general, 512, 513, 515
Pande, 166
Panjab, 8, 75, 76, 87, 169, 361, 468, 540;
Ranjit Singh's administration in, 88, 89;
British administration in, 90 sqq., 239,
371, 595; land-revenue and tenures in,
91, 279; education in, 116, 340; sati in,
142; during the Mutiny, 177, 1^0 sqq.',
legislative council in, 236, 564, 570, 601 ;
population of, 238; police in, 276, 277;
law courts in, 278, 381; tenant-right in,
282; famine in, 285, 286, 299, 306, 307;
forests in, 287; excise in, 288; opium in,
289; agriculture in, 290; rural indebted-
ness and co-operation in, 290, 291;
university in, 348, 354; law in, 383; rural
boards in, 520; municipahties in, 530,
533> 535; octroi duties in, 535, 536;
sedition in, 553, 554, 579, 583
Panjab frontier juiministration, 449-53,
466, 471
Panjab Frontier Force, 165, 396, 397, 451,
452, 454
Panjabi sepoys, 192, 204, 396, 399, 401, 402,
451, 481
Panjah, the, 426
Panjdeh incident, the, 397, 423-5, 507
Pano inhabitants of Ganjam, the, 268
Panthay rebellion, the, 434
Paper currency, 329-31
Paper currency reserve, 325, 331, 332
Parlakimedi, troubles in, 39
Parliament, functions of, 211, 216, 217,
221-5, 233, 542, 545, 560, 580, 603;
standing committees of, 540, 603; pro-
posed Indian representation in, 561
Parliamentary under-secretary of state, 212
Parsi shipbuilders, 145, 146, 151; matri-
monial courts, 259, 260; and female
education, 345; law, 389
Parsons, A., 145
Particular Baptist Society, the, 123
Pashtu, 454, 469
Pasi caste, the, 343
Patel, the, 60, 62, 65, 70, 71, 261, 280, 514
Pathans, the, 195, 401, 448, 450-3, 460,
461, 466, 469-74
Patiala, 192, 204, 477, 482
Patna, 24, 35; massacre at, 155; during
the Mutiny, 180, 181; high court at,
380; Case, the, 380
Patna district, 143
Patna division, 1 73
Patshalas, 100, 338, 356
Patwaris, 29, 305
Peacock, Sir Barnes, 384, 524
Peary Churn Sircar, 538
Peel, Sir Robert, 14
Pegu, 172, 364; coast of, 152; forests in,
444; dacoity in, 445; rice cultivation in,
445.446
Pegu division, 432, 439, 441
Pegu Light Infantry, 442
Pegu Sapper Battalion, 442
Pelsaert, Francisco, 294
Penal Code, the, 8, 18, 79, 128, 229, 270,
276, 383, 387, 388
Percy, Earl, 568, 570
Perim, 150
Periyar Dam, the, 51
Perjury, 383, 384
Permanent settlement, 2^ sqq.y 83; prin-
ciple of, 44, 282; extension of limited,
80
Permanent under-secretary of state, 212
Perry, Sir Erskine, 379
Persia, war with, 150, 172, 404-6; Seistan
boundary of, 411; campaign in north-
western, and southern, 480; invaded by
Turks, 485; Russian influence in, 495;
Anglo-Russian agreement regarding,
577
Persian, the language of the law courts, 95,
98, 100, no; studies, 100, 102, 104, 118,
345
INDEX
655
Persian Gulf, pirates in, 144, 147, 149, 150;
surveyed, 152; jurisdiction in, 380; arms
traffic in, 473, 474; defence of, 479
Pertab Singh, Sir, 477
Peshawur, 75, 93, 169, 404, 418, 450, 452,
454, 458, 461, 464, 465, 467-9, 475, 530;
during the Mutiny, 190-2, 194; proposal
to cede, 193; conference at, 416, 417
Peshawur division, 400, 451
Peshwa, the, 59, 75, 492 ; successions under,
497
Pett, Phineas, 144
Petty Sessions, court of, 63
Phayre, Sir Arthur, 432, 440, 441, 444, 445
Pherozeshah Mehta, 555, 558
Phillaur, 190
Phipps, Mr H., 352
Pilgrim tax abolished, 126
Pindaris, the, 78, 103, 296
Pirates, in the Arabian Sea, 145, 147, 149;
in the Persian Gulf, 147, 149; off Borneo,
150
Pishin, ceded, 419, 421, 456
Pitt, Wilham, i
Plague, bubonic, at Bombay, 263, 372, 550;
in Madras, 270
Plassey, 155; prophecy regarding the cen-
tenary of, 173, 183, 193
Police, in Bengal, 24-7, 245, 246; in Madras,
55sqq.; in Bombay, 63, 69, 70; in the
United Provinces, 79, 276, 277; in the
Panjab, 92, 276, 277; Curzon's reforms
of> 372, 373» 514; in Burma, 442; in the
North-West Frontier Province, 474, 475 ;
in the villages, 513^ 5^4
Poligars, 52
Political agitation, in Madras, 270; directed
against finance, 322; causes of, 352;
effects of, on relations with the Indian
states, 506, 507; general, 538 5^g., 562,
563, 573
Political department, at Bombay, 255;
Curzon's reforms of, 374; perquisites
abolished, 505
Pollock, Sir Frederick, 386
Polwhele, Brigadier, 180
Pondichery, 154, 436, 575
Poona, 60-2, 65, 66, 107, 108, 260, 265,
296, 540, 550, 557; civil engineering
college at, 363
Poona division, 400
Poor relief in villages, 5 1 5
Port trusts, 263
Portfolio system, 227 sqq., 258
Portuguese, campaign against Alibag,
145; introduced prickly pear, 271
Post Office, at Bombay, 68; revenue of,
327
Pottinger, Colonel, 131, 133
Powindah, the Mullah, 475
Powindahs, the, 451, 460
Prant, 255, 256
Pratab Singh, Maharajah, 401
Presidency College, Calcutta, 104
Presidency towns, jurisdiction in, 5, 259;
municipalities in, 523 sqq.
Press, Canning's Act, 35, 119, 548; Bengali,
106; removal of restrictions on, 114;
vernacular, 539, 548, 574; freedom of
the, 548; restrictions reimposed on, 554,
5595 562, 574, 584, 585
Prickly pear, 171
Prince of Wales, his visit to India, 495
Principal sadr amin, the, 26, 247
Prinsep, H. T., 112, 113, 227
Printing and stationery, government, 242
Printing press, at Serampur, 99, 100
Privy Council, appeal to, regarding sati,
142; judgments on Hindu wills, 393
Probate Act, the, 394
Prome, 444
Property, Hindu law of, 390-3
Protective tariffs, 601, 602
Provincial autonomy, 588, 592
Provincial civil service, 367, 368
Provincial courts of appeal, 24
Provincial governments, relations with the
Government of India, 240^9^.; their
finance, 319, 320, 326; see also Governors
and Lieutenant-governors
Provincial Insolvency Act, the, 386
Pruen, Lieutenant, 147
Prussia, 490
Public debt, 315, 327, 328, 333; internal,
331
Public Health Act, the, 519
Public Instruction, department of, 119,
336; at Bombay, 69; committee of, in
Bengal, 104, 105
Public Services Commission, 1886, 348,
366; 1912, 376, 377
Public Works department, the, in Madras,
51, 52, 274; in Bombay, 74, 263; in the
United Provinces, 85; in the Panjab, 93;
in the Government of India, 230, 231;
finance of, 318; Curzon's reforms of,
373, 374; in Burma, 444
Pubna district, 249
Pumea district, 34
Pusa, central institute of agricultural re-
search at, 290, 312, 352
Quarterly Review, the, 123
Queen's College, Benares, 348
Quetta, 214, 455, 456; occupation of, 414-
16, 458; cadet college at, 482
Quetta division, 400
Quetta-Nushki railway, 467
Quilon, 164
Radha Kanta Deb, Raja, supports sati, 140
Raghunath Rao, 58, 147
Railways, 32, 169, 297, 341, 503; alleviate
famine, 300, 303, 307-1 1, 321 ; finance of,
318, 319, 325-8, 333; moral influence of,
344; Board, 373, 482, 483; in Central
Asia, 428; projected French, in Upper
Burma, 437, 438; in British Burma, 444
656
INDEX
Rajahmundry, 270
Rajamandrug, 147
Rajapur river, 146
Rajaram College, Kathiawar, 346
Rajbanses, the, 129
Rajkumars, the, 129, 130
Rajputana, 169; during the Mutiny, 179,
203; primitive tribes in, 256; famine in,
300, 307; education in, 345; recruitment
in, 402
Rajput states, 490
Rajputs, female infanticide among, 1 2gsqq. ;
practise sati, 132, 142; sepoys, 158, 159;
college for chiefs of, 345
Ram Mohan Roy, urges reform, 102, 104;
petitions Amherst, 105, no, 140; visits
England, no, 1 42 ; advises Bentinck,
140, 141 ; founds the Brahmo Samaj, 538
Ramnad, raja of, 51
Ramosi rising, the, 7 1
Rampa rebellion, the, 268, 269
Ramtak tank, the, 285
Rand, W. C, 550
Ranger, the, 147
Rangoon, 174, 369, 436, 437, 441, 444;
recorder of, 381, 443 ; Shwedagon Pagoda
at, 433; trade at, 433; High School and
College at, 445; immigration into, 445;
municipahty of, 447, 532, 533
Rangpur, 23
Raniganj, 196, 251
Ranjit Singh, 8, 87, 88
Rasul Khan, 38
Ratnagiri, 59, 257
Ratnagiri Rangers, the, 71
Ravi, the, 93, 194, 283
Rawlinson, Sir Henry, 414
Rawulpindi, 425, 553
Rawulpindi division, 400
Read, Alexander, 47
Reading, Lord, 509
Record of rights, proposed in Bengal, 3 1 ,
249, 250; in Madras, 49, 271; in the
United Provinces, 81, 84, 250, 282; in
the Panjab, 250, 282 ; in Bombay, 265
Recorder's Court, in Bombay, 58, 63, 67;
in Burma, 443
Red Crescent Society, the, 577, 584
Red Sea cable, the, 214, 403
Reed, General, 193
Reforms, of 1892, 542; Morley-Minto, 486,
557, 5^0 sqq., 579, 595; Montagu-
Chelmsford, 487, 488, 587 sqq.
Registration revenue, 320
Regulating Act, the, 58
Regulations, 5, 22, 63, 66, 67, 76, 77
Religious policy, 121, 122; fear of conver-
sion, 123; danger of interference, 124;
official recognition of Hindu, etc. festi-
vals, 125, 126; administration of endow-
ments, 127; in education, 347, 350; in
Burma, 441
Renaud, Major, 183, 184, 187
Restitution of stolen goods, 70, 7 1
Revenge, the, 144
Reventlow, Count von, 478
Reverse councils, 329, 330
Rewa, 201
Rhator Rajputs, the, 130
Ribbentrop, — , 364
Rice cultivation in Burma, 445, 446
Ripon, Lord, 215, 228, 346, 539, 541, 543,
545; and council, 232; local self-govern-
ment policy, 291,447, 516, 521, 534, 535;
foreign policy of, 421, 422; policy in
Kashmir, 496
Risaldar major, the, 401
Roads, in Bengal, 31, 32, 248, 249, 518; in
Madras, 51, 274; in the Panjab, 93
Roberts, Mr G., 592
Roberts, Frederick, Lord, 419-22, 439, 441,
464, 507
Robertson, Dr, 461
Robinson, Lieutenant, 147
Robinson, Lieutenant, 149
Rohilkhand, during the Mutiny, 1 78, 1 98,
199, 200, 203
Rohilla mercenaries, 38, 202
Roman Catholic priests, 1 2 1
Romesh Chandar Dutt, 359
Romilly, Sir John, 384, 385
Ronaldshay, Lord, Marquis of Zetland, 99,
377, 588, 594
Rose, Sir Hugh, 202, 203
Rosebery, Lord, 464
"Round Table", the, 591
Rowlatt Act, the, 586
Rowlatt Committee, the, 585
Royal Army Medical Corps, the, 482
Royal Artillery, the, 395
Royal Engineering College at Cooper's
Hill, 363
Royal Engineers, the, 362, 363, 395
Royal Navy, the, employed in eastern
waters, 145-7, ^5^> ^S^j ^54j vessels for,
built at Bombay, 146; cost to India, 225
Royal Titles Act, the, 219, 225
Ruapetapeka, 150
Rumbold, Sir Thomas, 122
Rural boards, the, 516 sqq.
Rurki, 1 1 7, 337, 363
Rushikulya, the, 268
Russell, George, 39, 40
Russell, Lord John, 19, 223
Russia, British relations with, 1844, etc.,
404, 495; 1856, etc., 405 sqq., 496; 1884,
etc., 397, 400, 422 sqq., 457, 464, 507;
Tibetan interests of, 427, 428; entente
with, 232, 403, 428-30, 473
Russian Turkestan, 408, 412
Russo-Japanese War, 352, 426, 428, 551
Russo-Turkish War, 416, 577
Ryotwari settlement, in Madras, 46 sqg.^
271; in Bombay, 60 sqq., 256; in Sind,
257; in Berar, 281
Ryotwari villages, 82, 91, 280
Sabzi-Mandi, 193, 194
INDEX
657
Sachin, 477
Sadarwarid patti, the, 62
Sadozai, the, 420
Sadr adalats, the, in Bengal, 15, 247, 393;
in Madras, 42, 393; in Bombay, 59, 63-7,
72, 74; at Agra, 78; amalgamated with
the Supreme Courts, 380; procedure in,
382 ; Hindu law of property under, 392
Sadr amins, 43, 63-5, 67, 72, 260, 270
Sadullah Khan, tlie Mad Mullah, 465
Sagor and Narbada Territories, 20, 75, 87,
202, 239, 278
Sagor Island, 128, 129, 139
Saharanpur, 79
Saidapett, 272
St Barbe, Mr, 433
St Leger, Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon.
Arthur, 163
Salar Jang, 202
Salbai, Treaty of, 58
Salem, 44, 269
Salisbury, Lord, views on the Council of
India, 213, 214; foreign policy of, 214,
406, 412-16, 418, 421, 422, 425, 464;
relations with the Government of India,
214, 215; general, 544, 568, 577
Salonika, 480
Salsette, 58, 63, 68, 147
Salt, administration in Bengal, 21; in
Madras, 53, 54; in Bombay, 62, 63, 68,
266; revenue, 316, 320, 322, 326, 327,
333; treaties regarding, 503
Salt Range, the, 354
Salvation Army, the, 577
Samana Range, the, 461, 465, 466
Samana Rifles, the, 467
Samarkand, 404, 407, 420
Sambar, sultan of, 149
Sambhaji Angria, 146
Samil, 471
San Stefano, Treaty of, 416
Sanads of adoption, the, 493, 496
Sandeman, Sir Robert, 453-6, 458, 461 , 466
Sandhurst, 397
Sandur state, 41
Sanganian pirates, 147
Sanitary Commissioner, 57
Sanitation, 242; in the presidency towns,
523. 524
Sanskrit studies, 99-107, 109, 1 1 1, 1 12, 1 18,
345, 348
Santal insurrection, 27, 35
Santal parganas, 35
Saraks, 423
Sarawan Brahui chiefs, 466
Sardars of the Deccan, the, 260
Sarsubehdar, the, 65
Sastri, 66
Satara, 59, 61, 62, 66, 168, 200
Satara district, 531
Sati, in Madras, 40; in Bengal, 104, 341,
538; prohibited, 109, 131^9^., 558
Satlej, the, 75, 87, 89, 93, 165, 284
Savaras, the, 39
Sawyer, Captain, 150
Sayer dues, 53
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Sir, 170, 344, 345,
54^ 544, 549> 577
Sayyid Akbar, Mullah, 465, 466
Scheduled districts, see Non-regulation
districts
Schlich, Sir William, 364, 444
Schools, see Educational policy
SchuvalofF, Count, 412
Schwann, Mr, 545
Scinde Irregular Horse, the, 449
Scott, Sir George, 439
Scott, Sir Leslie, 506
Sea customs, 53, 68, 266, 316, 317, 320,
^ 325-7> 332, 333
Secret dispatches, 210, 211, 219
Secretary of state for India, see India Office
and Home Government
Secunderabad, 164
Secunderabad division, 400
Sehore, 201, 202
Seistan boundary question, 41 1, 412
Selborne, Lord, 595, 603
Selim I, 577
Sepoy forces, mutinies of, at Barrackpore,
13, 162; at Vellore, 122, 123, 135, 140,
163; Mutiny of 1857, 167 sqq.; origin of,
1 53 sqq. ; expansion of, 1 56 ; classes and
quality of, 158, 159, 165; demoralisation
of, 166, 171 sqq.; proportion of, to Euro-
peans, 172, 397; general service, 172;
reorganised after the Mutiny, 396;
officers, 401; recruitment of 19 14-18,
481
Serampur, 20, 132; mission founded at, 99,
122, 123, 134; press at, 100; college at,
105
Serbia, 578
Seringapatam, 164
Seven Years' War, 146, 155
Shah Alam II, 156
Shah Bahadur, 196
Shah Najif, 197
Shah Shuja, 165
Shahabad, 133
Shahpur, 449
Shakespear, — , 129
Shan states, the, 375, 434, 439, 444,
446
Shanars, the, 269
Shanghai, 434
Shankargarh, 465
Shans, the, 446
Sharp, Sir Henry, 353
Shastras, the, 122, 129, 132-4, 136-9,
393
Shatt-el-Arab, the, 479
Shaw, Mr, 433
Sher Afzal, 46 1
Sher 'Ali, Amir, 405-7, 409-20, 422, 425,
458
Sher »Ali Khan, Wali, 420
Sheridan, R. B., i
658
INDEX
Sheristadar^ the, 61
Sherman Act, the, 324
Shikarpur, 73
Shiranis, the, 461, 470
Sholapur district, 59, 65, 66
Shore, the Hon. F. J., 11
Shore, Sir John, Lord Teignmouth, 1 33
Shwedagon Pagoda, 433
Sialkot, 194
Siam, slave-trade in, 434; relations with
Burma, 437, 444, 584
Sibi, ceded, 419, 421, 456
Sibpur, 337
Sidi, the, of Janjira, 145
Sihbandis, the, 71
Sikandar Bagh, the, 197
Sikh state, the, 496; wars with, 75, 89, 165;
frontier management of, 449-51
Sikhs, the, recruitment of, 165, 173, 396,
401, 451, 481 ; regiments in the Mutiny,
180-2, 184, 187, 190-2, 195, 204; mar-
riages, 394; Ghadr and other conspira-
cies, 485, 553, 582
Sikkim, 20
Silahdars, 71
Silver, fluctuations in value of, 320, 321,
324, 330-2
Simla, 349; conference at, 410, 411, 415
Simonseki, Treaty of, 426
Sind, annexation of, 14, 59; police in, 71,
72; administration of, 73, 257, 261,
468 ; during the Mutiny, 1 92 ; law courts
in, 259-61, 381 ; forest administration in,
264 ; salt administration in, 266 ; frontier
policy in, 448, 449, 452, 453
Sindhia, Daulat Rao, 59, 75
Singap>ore, 582
Sinha, Lord, 231, 570, 587
Sipri, 203
Sir Jayaji Rao, 179, 180, 197, 203, 497,
.499. 507
Siraj-ud-daula, 155
Sirhind Canal, the, 283
Sirsa, 84
Sivaji, the cuh of, 550, 551, 575
Sivakasi, 269
Sladen, Sir Edward, 433, 435, 441
Slavery, abolition of, 3, 11, 123, 127, 128;
in Madras, 40, 41; in Siam, 434; in
Burma, 446
Sleeman, Sir William, 33, 168
Small Causes Court, at Bombay, 63
Smith, Colonel Baird, 193, 195, 298
Smith, Courtney, 139, 143
Smith, Robert ("Bobus"), 103, 119
Smyth, Colonel, 176
Social reform, urged by Grant, 97, 98;
urged by Ram Mohan Roy, 102, 104;
urged by Elphinstone, 108; Macaulay
on, 113; British policy regarding, 1 2 1 sqq. ;
Indian interest in, 538
Society for Promoting Christian Know-
ledge, the, 121
Socotra, 152
Somaliland, 480
South Africa, Indians in, 581, 582;
"Round Table" in, 591
South Canara, 50, 52
South Konkan, 58
Southborough, Lord, 595, 600
Sovereignty of the British crown in India,
2, 502
Spearman, Captain, 433
Specific Relief Act, the, 386, 388
Spin faction, the, 47 1
Staal, Baron de, 408, 424
Staff Corps, the, 396-400
Stamfordham, Lord, 217
Stamp revenue, the, 317, 320, 327
Stanley, Lord, 19, 28, 208, 212, 226, 227,
335. 359
Star of India, the Order of, 495
Statute law, 5
Statutory Civil Service, the, 361, 365, 367
Steamships, 149, 177, 341
Stephens, Sir James Fitzjames, 386
Stewart, Sir Donald, 464
Stokes, Sir Whitley, 386
Stolietoff, Colonel, 417, 418, 422
Stout, Commander, 149
Strabo, 535
Strachey, Sir John, 32, 169
Strachey, Lytton, 225
Strachey, Sir Richard, 301
Strange, Sir Thomas, 38, 393
Strover, Captain, 433
Subadar major, the, 401
Subordinate judges, 247
Succession Act, the, 388, 394
Successions in the Indian states, 493, 496,
497
Sudan, the, 480
Sudra castes, the, 1 35, 344
Suez Canal, the, 433, 446
Sumatra, 152
Supalayat, Queen, 435, 447
Superintendent of roads, the, 51
Supreme Courts, 5, 96, 379, 384, 392, 393;
procedure in, 382 ; at Calcutta, registra-
tion abolished, 6; punishes sati, 132;
represented on the legislative council, 1 7,
233; merged in the High Court, 247;
at Madras, 42; at Bombay, 58, 63, 64,
Surada zamindari, the, 39
Surat, 58, 59, 63, 64, 144, 260, 555, 574
Surat Sihbandis, the, 71
Surendranath Banerjee, Sir, 359, 538, 551,
555
Survey, in Bengal, 31, 249, 250; in Madras,
47, 49; in the United Provinces, 81, 84;
in Bombay, 256
Suvarndrug, 149
Swally, Best's victory off, 144
Swartz, Christian, 98, 122
Swat, 463-5, 467, 473
Swat river, the, 467
Sydenham, Captain, 164
INDEX
659
Sydenham, Lord (Sir George Clarke), 243,
555, 556
Syriam, 446
Tabriz, 418
Tagore, Rabindranath, Dr, 354
Tahsil, the, 86, 90
Tahsildars, in the North- Western Provinces,
29, 304, 305; in Madras, 42, 56, 267; in
the Panjab, 90, 92
Takaviy 305
Takht-i-Sulaiman, the, 461
Taku forts, the, 150
Talaings, the, 445
Talati, the, 60, 261
Taluk Boards, 274
Talukdars, the, in Bengal, 30; in Oudh, 94,
168, 185, 186, 188, 200, 203, 205, 279; in
the North-Western Provinces, 167; in the
Central Provinces, 280
Taluks (or talukas), in Madras, 42; in
Bombay, 260-2, 265
Tanjore, 44
Tank, nawab and state of, 454, 462, 498
Tantia Topi, 183, 197, 198, 202, 203
Tantric studies, loi
TapasnaviSy the, 70
Tappa, the, 472
Taqwim-ud-din, 465
Tarakzai Mohmands, the, 461
Tashkent, 408, 412, 414, 417, 421, 426, 495
Tavoy, 444
Tayler, William, 180, 181
Taylor, Meadows, 170
Tea-plantations, 341
Teak, 272
Technical education, 349, 350, 352, 353
Teignmouth, Lord, see Shore, Sir John
Tekke Turkomans, 413
Telegraph, 32, 169, 503
Telingas, the, 158, 399
Tellicherri, 153, 158
Temple, Sir Richard, 90, 450, 545, 546
Tenant-right, 45, 83, 91, 92, 249, 280-2
Tenasserim, 20, 23, 439, 441
Territorial Force, the, 402
Terrorism, in Bengal, 252-4, 552, 557, 574,
575; in Madras, 270; 1914-18, 485, 486;
committee on, 585; the Rowlatt Acts,
586
Testamentary power, 391, 393, 394
Thagi, in Bengal, 33, 34; in Madras, 40; in
the Doab, 78, 79; in the Panjab, 92;
Department of, 373; general, 341
Thai, 467
Thana, 147
Thana, the, in Bengal, 26; in Kathiawar,
256
Thana Rangers, the, 71
Thanadars, the, 29, 56
Thar and Parker district, 73
Theosophical Society, the, 540, 584
Thettawshe, 436
Thibaw, King, 435-9, 447
Thomas, — , 98, 99
Thomason, James, 82; his educational
policy, 116, 339
Thomason Engineering College, 1 1 7, 363
Thompson, Rivers, 441
Thomson, Mowbray, 184
Tibet, 426, 427, 430, 477
Tilak, B. G., 487, 549-51, 555, 556, 558,
^562,575,584
Tmnevelly, 44, 270, 575
Tirah, 465, 466, 473, 474
Tirhut, 341
Tobacco, 52
Tochi, 451, 465, 467, 468
Tod, Lieutenant-Colonel James, 130
Toddy, 54, 55
Tols, loi, 337
Tonkin, 437, 438
Topasses, 153
Tor faction, the, 471
Tort, the law of, 386
Torture Commission, the, 56
Toungoo, 444.
Town councils, 526, 527
Town Improvement Act, the, 273
Township officer, the, 442
Tranquebar, mission at, 121
Trans-Caspia, 480
Trans-Caspian Railway, the, 428
Transfer of Property Act, the, 386-8
Transvaal, the, 581, 582
Travancore, 392
Treaties, duration of, 497
Trevelyan, Sir Charles, 106, 118
Trichinopoly, 38, 44, 164
Tucker, H. St G., 15
Turco-G^erman mission, at Kabul, 583
Turi, the, 461, 466, 470, 471
Turkestan, 410, 412, 416, 428, 429
Turkoman tribes, the, 408, 413, 424
Turks, the, 150, 485, 544, 577, 583
Turner, Sir Charles, 386
Tuticorin, 270
Tweeddale, the Marquis of, 1 75
Twelve-year Rule, the, 83, 92, 281
Udaipur, Minto's sp)eech at, 509
Udny, George, 99, 134
Umra Khan, 463
Unattached List, the, 397
Uncovenanted Civil Service, the, 361, 362,
367
United Provinces, J^sqg., 239, 276 sqq.,
540, 541, 595; population of, 238; police
in, 276, 277; law courts in, 277; famine
in, 285, 286, 306, 308, 309; forests in,
287; excise in, 287, 288; opium in, 289;
agriculture in, 290; rural indebtedness
in, 290; co-operative credit in, 291; re-
cruitment in, 402, 481 ; municipalities in,
532, 535; octroi duties in, 535, 536;
political agitation in, 553, 583; governor
and executive council established in, 579,
595
66o
INDEX
United States, the, silver policy of, 321,
323, 324, 332, 484; Ghadr movement in,
582, 584
Universities, 118, 119, 336-40, 348, 349,
^ 351, 353
University College, London, 344
Upper Bari Doab Canal, the, 93, 283
Upi)er Chenab Canal, the, 284
Upper Duncan Dock, the, 146
Upper Ganges Canal, the, 84, 85
Upper Jehlam Canal, the, 284
Upper Old Bombay Dock, the, 145
Urdu, 343, 345
Uriyas, the, 268
Utmanzai Mohmands, the, 461, 465, 473
Vaccination department, the, 57
Vaidyas, the, 95, loi
Vaishya caste, the, 135
Vakils, 30
Vancouver, 582
Vedantic studies, loi
Vedas, the, 540
Vehar water- works, the, 525
Vellore, mutiny at, 122, 123, 135, 140, 163
Vernacular Press Act, the, 548
Vernacular studies, 350-2
Vesh, 472, 473
Viceroy, see Governor-general
Victoria, 598
Victoria, Queen, 205, 219, 225, 301, 349,
432, 433. 494» 500
Victoria Cross, the, 576
Vidyalaya, the, 104, iii, 141
Vigilant, the, 147
Vijayadrug, 58, 144, 147
Village community, the, in the United Pro-
vinces, 82, 83; in the Panjab, 91; in
Oudh, 94, 279, 280; general, 511 sqq.
Village Community Seff-Government Act,
the, 514
Vingurla, 150
Visabadi, the, 52
Vivekananda, Swami, 551
Viyavahara Mayukha, the, 389
Vizagapatam, troubles in, 39, 40
Volunteers, in the Mutiny, 180
Wadias, the, 145, 146, 151
Wahabi sect, the, 38, 169, 181
Wakf Vahdity Act, the, 394
Wakhan, 409
Walker, Colonel, 60, 130
Walker, Lieutenant, 150
Wana, 451, 463, 468
Waran Valley, the, 466
Warburton, Sir Robert, 456, 467
Ward, W., at Seramp)ore, 99
Watson, Vice- Admiral Charles, 146, 154
Watson, Conmiodore John, 147
Wauchope, — , 34, 135
Waziris, the, 454
Waziristan, 455, 458, 460, 462, 466, 475,
485
Waziristan Militia, the, 467
Wedderburn, Sir W., 576
Wellesley, Marquess, 8, 87, 99, 122, 128,
134. 135. 167, 168, 357, 497, 502
WelHngton, Duke of, 13, 14, 165
Wellington Cadet College, 482
Wesleyan schools, 117
West, Sir Raymond, 386
West Indies, slavery in, 1 1
Westbury, Lord, 391
Western influence, 341
Western Jumna Canal, the, 84, 88, 283,
295
Wheat supplies, royal commission on, 483
Wheeler, Sir Hugh, 183, 187
White, Sir George, 439
White, Sir Herbert, 375, 441
White Mutiny, the, 395
Whitlock, General, 202
Widows, remarriage of, 169
Wilberforce, William, 97, 102, 119, 122-4,
136
Wilkinson, — , 131
Willes, Mr Justice, 386
Williams, Dr, 433
Willoughby, — ,131
Wilson, Brigadier Archdale, 176-8, 193-5
Wilson, Cracroft, 204
Wilson, H. H., 96, 104, 109, iii, 140, 141
Wilson, James, 226, 240, 315
Wilson, Sir James, 284
Windham, General, 197, 198
Wolfram, 444, 447, 483
Wolseley, Sir George, 439
Wood, Sir Charles, Lord Halifax, 14, 1 7, 18,
212, 223, 226-8, 244, 282, 358, 359, 381 ;
his educational policy, 118 sqq., 335, 336;
his views on the legislative councils,
233 sgg-
Wyllie, Sir W. C, 554
Wynn, C. W. W., 13
Yajnavalkya, 389
Yakub, amir, 411, 419, 420, 422, 456
Yamethin, 438
Yandabo, Treaty of, 20
Yassin, 463
Yenangyaung, 444
Young, Captain, 150
Younghusband, Colonel Sir Francis, 427
Yunnan, 433, 434, 438
Yusafzai, the, 454, 461
Ypres, 479
Zaimushts, the, 462
Zakka Khels, the, 462
Zamindari villages, 82, 91
Zamindars, powers of, in Bengal, 30, 79; in
Madras, 44, 45; in Sind, 257
Zanzibar, 152, 380
Zelenoi, General, 424
Zetland, Marquis of, see Ronaldshay, Lord
Zhob, valley and river of, 461, 462
Zulfikar, 424-6
CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BY WALTER LEWIS, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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